LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



33p Sftbomas SSEL parsons 



POEMS. i6mo. 

TRANSLATION OF DANTE'S DIVINA COMME- 
DIA INTO ENGLISH VERSE. i6mo, $1.50. 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



POEMS 



BY 



THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
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1893 



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Copyright, 1893, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H.O. Houghton & Co. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

Dr. Parsons was singularly indifferent to his 
repute as a poet. For poetry and for his own 
poetic expression he cared greatly; the perma- 
nence of his productions he left not indeed to 
chance but to the inherent vitality there might be 
in his verse, taking little pains to secure an audi- 
ence, and none at all in his later years to making 
such collections and arranging his poems in such 
order as would insure the attention of a world 
distracted by the demand of writers great and 
small. In 1854 a volume of his poems was issued 
by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and in 1872 
another general collection, " The Shadow of the 
Obelisk and Other Poems," by Messrs. Hatchards, 
in London. He contented himself otherwise with 
printing, not publishing, thin volumes of verse 
like "The Magnolia," and "The Old House at 
Sudbury," which now and then found their way 
into the bookstores, but more frequently were the 
cherished possession of his personal friends. He 
made use, too, of magazines and newspapers and 



iv PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

printed leaflets containing poems of special occa- 
sions or having some immediate interest for him- 
self and his circle of friends. 

It is from these varied sources that the pres- 
ent volume has been gathered. It does not aim 
at completeness. Dr. Parsons himself, though fre- 
quently urged by the present publishers to make 
a definitive edition of his poems, could never be 
induced to set about the task. Had he done so 
he would most certainly have swept aside a good 
many of his verses, for he was a most fastidious 
critic of his own work after his passion or his play- 
ful impulse had found expression. Therefore the 
principle herein adopted cannot be foreign from 
his own purpose ; the volume is a somewhat rep- 
resentative selection, covering indeed the greater 
portion of his lyrical writing, but by no means 
complete. It will be understood, of course, that 
this volume gathers Dr. Parsons's verses alone. 
The companion volume containing his translation 
of Dante and a brief biographical sketch by Miss 
Guiney represents the great poetic passion of the 
man. 

4 Park Street, Boston, 
October, 1893. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

On a Bust of Dante 1 

Dirge for One who Fell in Battle .... 4 

A Dirge 6 

Upon a Lady singing 8 

To Francesca 10 

Song 11 

Song for setting 13 

Viva la Musica 14 

Pieri, Yale ! 16 

Musica Trionfante 18 

The Intellectual Republic 20 

Address for the Opening of the Boston Theatre 25 

Address at the Opening of the Players' Club . . 29 

Proem 32 

Pilgrim's Isle 35 

Down by the Shore in December .... 37 

The People of the Deep 39 

Mary Booth 44 

Her Epitaph 46 

Louisa's Grave 48 

To a Young Girl dying 50 

The Sculptor's Funeral ....... 51 

" Into the Noiseless Country " 57 

Steuart's Burial 58 



vi CONTENTS 

On the Death of Daniel Webster .... 61 

Emerson 65 

Andrew 67 

Everett 68 

Aspromonte 70 

To James Russell Lowell 73 

To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .... 76 

With a Volume of Keats ...... 78 

The Birthplace of Robert Burns .... 80 

The Pennyroyal 82 

July 84 

The Scallop-Shell 86 

The Last Gentian 88 

On a Magnolia Flower 90 

To a Lilac 92 

The Taking of Sebastopol 96 

December Fourteenth 100 

St. James's Park 103 

Vespers on the Shore of the Mediterranean . . 105 

The Temple of Concord at Girgenti . . . 109 

Campanile di Pisa 110 

Sorrento 115 

Hudson River 118 

The Shadow of the Obelisk 122 

La Pineta Distrutta 127 

Letter from America to a Friend in Tuscany . 129 

Roslin Chapel 133 

By the Sudbury 135 

Inscription for a Drinking Fountain at Wayland . 137 

Martial Ode 138 

Guy Fawkes Day at the Old House in Sudbury . . 140 
The Old House in Sudbury Twenty Years after- 
wards 143 

My Sudbury Mistletoe 146 



CONTENTS vn 

The Willey House 147 

The Rose and the Oriole 155 

Saint Valentine's Day 157 

Health and Wealth and Love and Leisure . . 159 

Natural History of the Peacock .... 161 

To a Lady, with a Head of Pope Pius Ninth . . 163 
To a Lady, in Return for a Book of Michel An gelo's 

Sonnets 165 

To a Hungarian Lady — Homeward bound . . . 167 

Alle Sorelle 168 

To Josephine 171 

Lily of Strath-Farrar 172 

Obituary 174 

In Return for Some Prairie Birds .... 176 

To Maddalena 178 

Candlemas Night .179 

On a Photograph received from a Friend in Rome . 182 

On a Head of Hermione 183 

To a Lady, with a Head of Diana .... 184 

With a Gift of Lily-Buds 187 

Watching the River 189 

N^nia Amoris 191 

Think not of Me amid the Crowd . . . .192 

In Remembrance 194 

Epitaph on a Child 196 

Stanzas 197 

Sleep 199 

To a " Magdalen " . ....... 201 

The Groomsman to his Mistress 203 

Sotto l' Usbergo del Sentirsi puro .... 206 

" Like as the Lark " 207 

Inscription for an Alms Chest made of Camphor- 
Wood 209 

A Christmas Carol 211 



vin CONTENTS 

Easter Hymn 212 

Sonnets : 

To a Poet in the City 214 

On a Photograph of an Unknown Lady . . 215 

To the New Royall Professor 216 

" ye Sweet Heavens ! " . . . . * . 217 

"TIINOS 218 

Sonnet XIII. from the Vita Nuova . . . 219 

" There loomed a great shape " .... 220 

Ben dell 1 Intelletto 221 

Turning from Darwin to Thomas Aquinas . . 222 

Mercedes 223 

In Saint Joseph's 224 

" Lift me, Lord Jesus " 225 

Proem to a Translation of Manzoni's Ode on the 

Death of Napoleon 226 

"O Rest of God" 230 

Morning Dreams 232 

Paraphrase of a Passage in Dante .... 233 

Guido's Aurora 238 

Francesca da Rimini 240 

In Eclipse 242 

Lucerna sis Pedlbus Meis 244 

Paradisi Gloria 245 

Sursum Corda 246 



POEMS 



ON A BUST OF DANTE 

See, from this counterfeit of him 

Whom Arno shall remember long 9 
How stern of lineament, how grim, 

The father was of Tuscan song : 
There but the burning sense of wrong, 

Perpetual care and scorn, abide ; 
Small friendship for the lordly throng ; 

Distrust of all the world beside. 

Faithful if this wan image be, 

No dream his life was, — but a fight ; 
Could any Beatrice see 

A lover in that anchorite ? 
To that cold Ghibelline's gloomy sight 

Who could have guessed the visions came 
Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light, 

In circles of eternal flame ? 



ON A BUST OF DANTE 

The lips as Cumse's cavern close, 

The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin, 
The rigid front, almost morose, 

But for the patient hope within, 
Declare a life whose course hath been 

Unsullied still, though still severe, 
Which, through the wavering days of sin, 

Kept itself icy-chaste and clear. 

Not wholly such his haggard look 

When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed, 
With no companion save his book, 

To Corvo's hushed monastic shade ; 
Where, as the Benedictine laid 

His palm upon the convent's guest, 
The single boon for which he prayed 

Was peace, that pilgrim's one request. 

Peace dwells not here, — this rugged face 

Betrays no spirit of repose ; 
The sullen warrior sole we trace, 

The marble man of many woes. 
Such was his mien when first arose 

The thought of that strange tale divine, 
When hell he peopled with his foes, 

The scourge of many a guilty line. 



OX A BUST OF DANTE 6 

War to the last he waged with all 

The tyrant canker-worms of earth ; 
Baron and duke, in hold and hall, 

Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth ; 
He used Rome's harlot for his mirth ; 

Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime ; 
But valiant souls of knightly worth 

Transmitted to the rolls of Time. 

O Time ! whose verdicts mock our own, 

The only righteous judge art thou ; 
That poor old exile, sad and lone, 

Is Latium's other Virgil now : 
Before his name the nations bow r ; 

His words are parcel of mankind, 
Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow, 

The marks have sunk of Dante's mind. 



DIRGE 

FOR ONE WHO FELL IN BATTLE 

Koom for a Soldier ! lay him in the clover ; 

He loved the fields, and they shall be his cover ; 

Make his mound with hers who called him once 
her lover : 
Where the rain may rain upon it, 
Where the sun may shine upon it, 
Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
And the bee will dine upon it. 

Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches ; 
Take him to the fragrant fields, by the silver 

birches, 
Where the whippoorwill shall mourn, where the 
oriole perches : 
Make his mound with sunshine on it, 
Where the bee will dine upon it, 
Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
And the rain will rain upon it. 

Busy as the bee was he, and his rest should be the 
clover ; 

4 



DIRGE 5 

Gentle as the lamb was he, and the fern should be 

his cover ; 
Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow 
over : 
Where the rain may rain upon it, 
Where the sun may shine upon it, 
Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
And the bee will dine upon it. 

Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full 

often 
Out of those tender eyes which evermore did soften : 
He never could look cold till we saw him in his 
coffin. 
Make his mound with sunshine on it, 
Plant the lordly pine upon it, 
Where the moon may stream upon it, 
And memory shall dream upon it. 

" Captain or Colonel," — whatever invocation 
Suit our hymn the best, no matter for thy station, — 
On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a 
mighty nation ! 
Long as the sun doth shine upon it 
Shall glow the goodly pine upon it, 
Long as the stars do gleam upon it 
Shall memory come to dream upon it. 



A DIRGE 

Slowly tread, and gently bear 
One that comes across the wave, 

From the oppression of his care, 
To the freedom of the grave ; 

From the merciless disease, 
Wearing body, wasting brain, 

To the rest beneath the trees, — 
The forgetting of all pain ; 

From the delicate eye and ear, 
To the rest that shall not see ; 

To the sleep that shall not hear, 
Nor feel the world's vulgarity. 

Bear him, in his leaden shroud, 
In his pall of foreign oak, 

To the uncomplaining crowd, 

Where ill word was never spoke. 



A DIRGE 

Bear him from life's broken sleep — 
Dreams of pleasure, dreams of pain, 

Hopes that tremble, joys that weep, 
Loves that perish, visions vain — 

To the beautiful repose, 

Where he was before his birth ; 
With the ruby, with the rose, 

With the harvest, earth in earth ! 

Bring him to the body's rest, 

After battle, sorely spent, 
Wounded, but a welcome guest 

In the Chief's triumphal tent. 



UPON A LADY SINGING 

Oft as my lady sang for me 
That song of the lost one that sleeps by the sea, 
Of the grave and the rock and the cypress-tree, 
Strange was the pleasure that over me stole, 
For 't was made of old sadness that lives in my 
soul. 

So still grew my heart at each tender word, 
That the pulse in my bosom scarcely stirred, 
And I hardly breathed, but only heard : 
Where was I ? — not in the world of men, 
Until she awoke me with silence again. 

Like the smell of the vine, when its early bloom 
Sprinkles the green lane with sunny perfume, 
Such a delicate fragrance filled the room : 
Whether it came from the vine without, 
Or arose from her presence, I dwell in doubt. 

Light shadows played on the pictured wall 
From the maples that fluttered outside the hall, 

8 



UPON A LADY SINGING 9 

And hindered the daylight, — yet, ah ! not all ; 
Too little for that all the forest would be, — 
Such a sunbeam she was to me ! 

When my sense returned, as the song was o'er, 
I fain would have said to her, " Sing it once 

more ; " 
But soon as she smiled my wish I forbore : 

Music enough in her look I found, 

And the hush of her lip seemed sweet as the sound. 



TO FRANCESCA 

Sing Waller's lay, 
" Go, lovely rose," or some old song, 

That should I play 
Feebly, thy voice may make me strong 
With loving memories cherished long. 

Sing " Drink to me " 
Or " Take, oh, take those lips away," 

Some strain to be 
When I am gone and thou art gray, 
Remembered of a happier day. 

A solemn air, 
A melody not loud but low, 

Suits whitening hair ; 
And when the pulse is beating slow 
The music's measure should move so. 

The song most sweet 
Is that which lulls, not thrills the ear ; 

So, love, repeat 
For one who counteth silence dear 
That which to silence is most near. 
10 



SONG 

Strike me a note of sweet degrees — - 
Of sweet degrees — 
Like those in Jewry heard of old ; 
My love, if thou wouldst wholly please, 

Hold in thy hand a harp of gold, 
And touch the strings with fingers light, 
And yet with strength as David might — 
As David might. 

Linger not long in songs of love — 
In songs of love ; 
No serenades nor wanton airs 
The deeper soul of music move ; 
Only a solemn measure bears 
With rapture that shall never cease 
My spirit to the gates of peace — 
The gates of peace. 

So feel I when Francesca sings — 
Francesca sings — 
My thoughts mount upward ; I am dead 
11 



12 SONG 

To every sense of vulgar things, 

And on celestial highways tread, 
With prophets of the olden time — 
Those minstrel kings, the men sublime 
The men sublime. 



SONG FOR SETTING 

INSCRIBED TO KARL PFLTTEGER, MELODIST 

Oh, marry me to music soon ! 

My lover's lay kept saying, saying. 
Let some fine harmonist give tune 

To my sweet words ; and I, obeying, 

Laid in my master's hand the song 
For him to grace with gentle measure, 

And give it life to linger long 

In maidens' hearts, a joy and treasure. 

And now my song seems new to me 

That all day long I 'm singing, singing, 

And all the summer by the sea 

My master's measure shall be ringing. 

Our brook shall stay to list the lay 
That Master Karl to music married, 

And then go bounding to the bay 

All the more bright for having tarried, 



13 



VIVA LA MUSICA 

Our house, that long in darkness dwelt, 
And long in silence, day by day, 

Before the mountain snows could melt, 
While yet the world was bleak and gray, 
Received an impulse from the play 

Of sudden fingers on the strings, 
That made the new-born meadows gay 

With magic touch, as 't were the Spring's. 

The melancholy frog no more 
Shall pipe his burden, twanging shrill ; 

The oriole gives his matins o'er, 
No song-bird now hath any skill ; 
Even that reproachful whippoorwill 

That stirred such memories in my heart 
Is hushed, — yet comes, a listener still, 

Nightly, to hear Cordelia's art. 

O virgins of the silver lute ! 
O goddess of the golden chord ! 

And thou great master of the flute, 
Pan, of the reeds acknowledged lord ! 
14 



VIVA LA MUSICA 15 

Troop hither, and your best reward 
For your old music, in the days 

When young Apollo was your king, 
Shall be to peep from yonder bays, 

And hear your latest scholar sing. 



PIERI, VALE! 

What god it was I cannot say, 

But one there was, when Jove was king, 

Who, wandering by some Grecian bay, 

Picked up a vacant shell that lay 

Bleached on the shore, a dry, unsavory thing. 

Nor is my memory well informed 
(No Lempriere 's at hand to blab) 

What tenant had this mansion warmed ; 

Something with which the JEgean swarmed, 
Something of lobster-kind, perhaps, or crab. 

But he, this cunning child of heaven, 
Trimmed it according to his wish, 

Crossed it with fibres, — three, or seven, 

Or, as Pausanias thinks, eleven, — 

And gave a language to the poor, dead fish. 

At once, the house, which, even when filled 

By its old habitant, was dumb, 
Now, as the immortal artist willed 
A little sea-Odeon trilled, 

And trembled low to the celestial thumb. 
16 



FIERI, VALE! 17 

Enraptured with his new invention, 

Up soared he to the blissful seat, 
And, having caught even Jove's attention, 
Yea, calmed a family dissension, 

Went serenading through the starry street. 

With us, the story 's the reverse : 

Our souls are born already strung, 
But, 'twixt the cradle and the hearse, 
Creeps a change o'er us — for the worse ! 
The heart hath music only when 't is young. 

For soon there comes a sordid god, 

Who snaps the precious chords of sound, 

And leaves the soul an empty pod, 

A yellow husk, — a dull, hard clod, 

A faded shell, in which no voice is found, 

Save when some bold but faltering hand, 
That dares to strike the tyrant Time, 

Tries his first impulse to command, 

And, where he loftily had planned, 

Spends the last ebbings of his youth in rhyme. 



MUSICA TRIONFANTE 

In the storm, in the smoke, in the fight, I come 
To bring thee strength with my bugle and drum. 
My name is Music, — and when the bell 
Rings for the dead man, I rule the knell ; 
And when the wrecked mariner hears in the 

blast 
The fog-bell sound, — it was I who passed. 
The poets have told you how I, a young maid, 
Came fresh from the gods to the myrtle shade, 
And thence by a power divine I stole 
To where the waters of Mincius roll ; 
Then down by Clitumnus and Arno's vale 
I wandered, passionate and pale, 
Until I found me at sacred Rome, 
Where one of the Medici gave me a home. 
Leo, great Leo, he worshiped me, 
And the Vatican stairs for my foot were free ; 
And now I am come to your glorious land, 
Give me great welcome with heart and hand. 
Remember Beethoven — I gave him his art — 
And Sebastian Bach and superb Mozart : 

18 



MUSICA TRIONFANTE 19 

Join them in my worship ; and when the swell - 
Of their mighty organs hath laid a spell 
On every sense, and thy cares are drowned, 
Hear the voices of heaven through the men 
heaven hath crowned. 



THE INTELLECTUAL REPUBLIC 

WRITTEN FOR THE BOSTON LYCEUM, NOVEMBER 19, 1840 

Already graced with Bravery's martial crown, 
Our young republic pants for fresh renown ; 
When idle Prowess finds no scene for fame, 
Some loftier glory beams, in Virtue's name, 
Reposing Valor wantons in a trance 
Of calm philosophy or gay romance ; 
Refinement blooms, and Wisdom claims the wreath 
Which silver hairs, not scars, are hid beneath. 
In every state, as one heroic age, 
One intellectual, stands on history's page. 
Now maddening nations quit their tranquil farms 
To swell the fight — a universe in arms ! 
Now Strife, his work beginning to abhor, 
Bids tired Augustus close the gates of War ; 
Hushed is the trump — a milder sway succeeds, 
Now peaceful Georgics wake the Mantuan reeds. 
Such days beheld the Stoic porch arise, 
With Academia — garden of the wise ! 
Then Epicurus taught his gentle train 
The dulcet musings of a doubtful brain, 

20 



THE INTELLECTUAL REPUBLIC 21 

And Plato — bee-lipped oracle ! — beguiled 
His loved Lyceum, listening like a child. 

Thus eras change, and such a change is ours ; 
Rough Mars gives way to April's promised flow- 
ers : 
Forth springs the godlike intellect, unchained ; 
Guard it, good angels ! keep it unprof aned ; 
Guide it, lest, lured by offices or gold, 
Its rights be bartered, and its empire sold. 
Now books accomplish what the sword began, 
Wide spreads the rule of educated man, 
No let, no limit, to its march sublime, 
In space, but ocean — in duration, Time. 
So swift its course, some prophet may contend 
Its very progress bodes a speedy end : 
No ! like Niagara's changeless current driven, 
It moves, yet stays, eternal as the heaven : 
That mighty torrent, as it flows to-day, 
Forever flows, but never flows away ; 
The waves you gazed at yesterday are gone, 
Yet the same restless deluge thunders on. 

As crumble Custom's mouldering chains with 
rust, 
Power's gilded idol tumbles to the dust. 
Tradition totters from her cloudy throne, 
And all the impostures of the past are known. 
Hardly can we lend credence to the tale 



22 THE INTELLECTUAL REPUBLIC 

Of their long woes who first rent error's veil : 
What royal spite, what curses from the Church, 
Awed the pale scholar in his cloistered search ; 
How many from themselves their visions hid, 
Or wandered exiles, outcast and forbid, 
Like Dante, scaling with dejected tread 
A tyrant's stairs, to taste his bitter bread ! 
Think how Columbus toiled, through years of pain, 
For leave to try the secret of the main ; 
Yet the dream dawned, and gave, in spite of 

Rome, 
Spain a new world, and half mankind a home. 

Unhappy days ! when they who read the stars 
Oft only saw them through their dungeon bars : 
Our tutored minds less dangerous ways explore, — 
The immortal pioneers have gone before. 
As the worn bark, no more to storms a sport, 
Just makes the headland of her opening port, 
New perils then awake the master's dread, 
Anxious he walks, and eyes the frequent lead ; 
But, if the pilot come, he yields the helm, 
And stands a subject in his floating realm, 
The veteran's nod his mariners obey, 
And wind confiding on their shoaly way. 
Like them we travel, safely gliding by 
Opinion's thousand wrecks that round us lie. 



THE INTELLECTUAL REPUBLIC 23 

Not thus were you, ye leader spirits ! taught 
Your pathway, beaconed through the wilds of 

thought : 
For you no Newton yet had poised the world, 
No sage La Place heaven's glittering leaves un- 
furled, 
But each suspicion of the truth was born 
A dim conjecture, heralding the morn. 
Thus from his height bewildered Kepler strayed, 
To toy with vain Chaldea's mystic trade, 
And sought in yon blue labyrinth to behold 
Man's life and fortunes lustrously foretold. 
Hence Danish Tycho's heavenly city swarmed 
With crude ideas and fantasies deformed. 
Yet sparely blame ! nor be extreme to mark 
Their faulty light, when all was else — how dark ! 

But now the Mind, from ancient falsehood woke, 
Abjures old Superstition's rotten yoke : 
No wrathful threat in Nature's thunder fears, 
No fate predicted by the falling spheres. 
All childish fables, Fancy's fond pretense, 
Fade from the cold arithmetic of Sense : 
No jocund Fauns through copse or prairie rove, 
No dripping Naiads haunt the godless grove ; 
And had no holier new Religion given 
More certain tokens of a purer heaven, 



24 THE INTELLECTUAL REPUBLIC 

By fount and rock and by the sounding shore, 
Nothing were left to dream of and adore. 

Now to Truth's courts, a never-faltering throng, 
Thy torch, O Science ! lights and leads along. 
No sluggard sons this age of labor owns, 
In earth's great workshop solitary drones, 
But every mind the general task must share, 
Brave the long toil, and mingle in the care, 
In love with Knowledge, that alone can be 
Our country's hope — sole safeguard of the free. 



ADDRESS 

FOR THE OPENING OF THE BOSTON THEATRE, 
SEPTEMBER 11, 1854 

Welcome, bright eyes, that make our splendors 

pale : 
Ye reverend heads ! you generous hands ! all hail ! 
And thou, proud city ! to thy triumphs past 
Add this to-night, nor let it be thy last ; 
Be it thy glory to the coming age 
To have transmitted no adulterate stage, 
That aftertimes may count this beauteous dome 
Dear as the hearthstone of a father's home. 

Back, airy beings ! people of the brain ! 
Ye kingly shadows, in your graves remain ! 
Stay, you weird women ! wait the fatal bell ! 
Thou master of the charm, suspend the spell ! 
Be not impatient on our scene to burst ; 
You shall be summoned, but your herald first. 

Souls of dead bards ! that served our ancient art, 
Poets ! who largely read the human heart, 
Tell us why man, when life serenely glides, 

25 



26 ADDRESS 

Loves the fierce motion that disturbs the tides ! 
What god impels him, now his land is free, 
To play the hero that he cannot be ? 
What strong illusion, native in his breast, 
Made action charm him in his day of rest ? 

When arms and arsenals are idle shows, 
And navies playthings for the world's repose, 
The heart, like Nemi, never known to stir, 
Becomes a mirror of the things that were : 
Then grows the wish, and then is given the power, 
To be and feel beyond Life's little hour. 
The soldier ^Eschylus, at such a time, 
From the dark realm of passion and of crime, 
Called back those mighty shades to walk the earth, 
And made them deathless by a second birth. 
When all rapt Athens, in that early day, 
Sat in the sunshine, at the solemn play ; 
When to the music of a single flute 
The verse was uttered that for us is mute ; 
When through the orchestra, with slow advance, 
The Dorian measure led the choral dance, — 
Cold was that soul — oh! dead as Lethe's fen — 
That did not fight at Salamis again. 

But long ere this, when Bacchus was divine, 
At the mad vintage, where the new-made wine 



ADDRESS 27 

Fired the rude revellers, the learned say 
First rose th' uncouth resemblance of a play : 
What time Arion of the Lesbian isle 
To the wild chorus gave a graver style. 
The years are distant, and the light is dim, 
Yet hark ! the echo of a tragic hymn : 
Lo ! the fell Moenads with their visage smeared, 
And men made satyrs by the mask and beard. 

Such rites have been where now this temple 
stands : 
The savage dramas of the Indian bands ; 
Near the blue lake and by the midnight fire, 
See the red artist and the naked choir ! 
When the great Sachem with his Pequod court 
After the fray assembled at the sport — 
See ! — 't was but yesterday — their dance describe 
The hunt, the war, the triumph of their tribe : 
These too were actors, but their show is done ; 
Their last spectator was the setting sun. 

In Charles's days, when tragedy was mean, 
Once the light Muse went slipshod on the scene ; 
Was Charles alone at fault ? historian, tell — 
We love the sturdy Puritan too well ; 
What though the drama drooped beneath his 
ban, 



28 ADDRESS 

Spite of the bigot we revere the man ; 
What though he left polluted arts behind, 
He brought his sword, his Bible, and his mind. 

Something of that austerity be yours, 
Since Folly loves what easy Taste endures ; 
Let our purged altar and its blameless priest 
Honor the three-hilled city of the East ! 
That to the wise our theatre may seem 
A nobler school, a loftier Academe ! 
And Shakespeare's mind, transplanted to the shore 
Whose rocks are gold, whose sands are shining ore, 
(Or far as Freedom's onward march may draw 
Arts without arms, and without conquest, Law), 
A sacred well ! from whose o'erflowing brink 
Each generation in its turn may drink ; 
So shall your children thank you, not alone 
For wealth of empire grasping every zone, 
But write these words on Memory's grateful page, 
Sons of the Pilgrims ! you redeemed our stage. 



ADDRESS 

TO THE ASSEMBLY AT THE OPENING OF THE PLAYERS' 
CLUB IN NEW YORK, DECEMBER 31,1888 



The speaker advances with a chaplet bearing a label on which is 
written the name of Booth 

Let us crown Edwin. Though he wear 
The crown already of his Art, 
Grateful Manhattan's mighty mart 

May well a civic garland spare 
For one who hath deserved so well 

Of his whole country, carrying far 
And wide the great enchanter's spell, 

Under whose thralldom we all are. 
Yet not alone his laurel twine 

With civil oak. The poet's bays 
And critic's ivy should combine 

Besides, to speak our actor's praise. 
For he hath educated men, 

(Who knew none other lore but this), 
Making past history live again, — 

A lofty mark which many miss ! 
29 



30 ADDRESS 

Through him those rough lads of the West 

That never slept beneath a roof, 

Men from the mountains, tempest-proof, 

Gold-hunters, rugged and untaught, 
Feel Romeo's passion fill their breast, 

Or Hamlet's wisdom swell their thought. 
Even the great Marlborough, we -are told, 

More history learned from Shakespeare's page 
Then Holinshed's ; nor seems it bold 

To guess that many a sapient sage, 
As well as soldier, may have known 

More of mankind from gifted bards 
Than chroniclers, though he had grown 

Gray o'er the schoolroom's history-cards. 

TO THE PLAYERS 

Players ! I ask your benison for this wreath : 
Oh, read the name that here is writ beneath 
Approvingly, as of all words the one 
Most fit to glorify the sire and son ! 
Perchance the coming centuries will say, 
There was a home by Massachusetts Bay, 
Whence children came to keep that flame alive 
Which Edwin kindled, and may long survive 
Till each America, both North and South, 
Shall speak him honor with a single mouth, 



ADDRESS 31 

And England's language from the Arctic main 
To San Rosario's watch-tower hold one reign. 

TO MR. BOOTH 

Tragedian, teacher, take the crown 

Where love her myrtle with our laurel blends : 
These portals open to large troops of friends, 

But I behold, to cherish thy renown, 

A line, aye stretching, as in Banquo's glass, 
Of thousands coming after these do pass. 



PROEM 

Down by the sea, beside the pilgrim dunes, 

Down by the low strand where the waves have 
strife, 
We wove ourselves a little roll of runes, 

To lull our spirits from the jar of life : 
Sometimes the north-wind cut us like a knife, 

Sometimes wild Euros blinded us with spray, 
But always Ocean with his changing tunes 

Made measure with each cadence of our lay. 



And one day, wandering vacant on the strand, 
A little child, whose name shall yet be known, 

Culling strange forms and pebbles from the sand, 
Put in my hand a wonderful red stone ; — 

A jasper fragment of some ancient rock, 

Shaped like the Sphinx, expression just the 
same, — 
A Nubian face, as 't were a half -hewn block 
Before the finish of the master came. 
32 



PROEM 33 

The heavy head-gear, with its fold and fall, 
Recalling Dante's hood ; the drowsy lid, 

As if weighed down with frequent funeral, 
Dead to the presence as a pyramid ; 

A look of quietude, that seemed to say, 

" Labor no more ! the time is come for rest ; 

Thy life is with past people and the day 
Slow closing on thy vision in the west. 

" Of labors profitless in days gone by 

There lives no record ; nor shall there be end 

Of toils for men hereafter. Only I 

Have done with labor and would be thy friend." 

" Labor no more ! " (The jasper head to me 

Spoke in the pauses of the noisy night.) 
" Labor no more ! Thou hear'st the restless 
sea: 
The world's great work is doing, with might, with 
might ! 

" Ships pass and vanish, laden with desire, 
Carrying to every clime their trade and cares, 

And black sea -chariots with their freight of 
fire 
The breath of water o'er the water bears : 



34 PROEM 

" The mowers in the marsh, with scythe and wains, 
Their aftermath are rescuing from the tide, 

And the moss-gatherers from the autumn rains 
Their ocean-harvest under canvas hide : 

" And boys are in the woods for nuts and birds, — 
Plenty of people doing earthly things ! 

But for thyself, the wisest of all words 

Is ; Work no longer. ' 'T is the Sphinx that 
sings." 



PILGRIM'S ISLE 

There fell a charm upon the deep, 
A spell upon the silent shore ; 

The boats, like lily-pads asleep, 
Lay round me upon ocean's floor. 

weary world of noise and strife, 
O cities, full of gold and guile, 

How small a part ye make of life 
To one that walks on Pilgrim's Isle. 

1 watched the Gurnet's double star, 

Like Jove and Venus side by side, 
And on the smooth waves gleaming far 
Beheld its long reflection ride. 

My days of youth are almost flown, 
And yet, upon a night like this, 

Love will not let my heart alone ; 

Back comes the well-remembered bliss. 

Oft in thy golden locks ^ gleam 
Of other days illumes my brain, 
35 



36 PILGRIM'S ISLE 

And in thy hand's soft touch I seem 
To feel my boyhood born again. 

Ah, dearest, all will soon be o'er ! 

I see my sunset in thy smile ; 
It lingers longest on the shore, 

Th' enchanted shore of Pilgrim's Isle. 



DOWN BY THE SHORE IN DECEMBER 

They come and go ; their shadows pass 
Beyond the bound where blue and brine 

Kiss, and the orient clouds amass 
White piles above the horizon's line. 

Some of yon vessels will return, 

And some shall never touch their port ! 

Full many hearts that in them burn 
Will find life's voyage all too short. 

Inconstant Ocean ! who canst look 
So calm, with murder in thy frown, 

For whom those meadows I forsook, 
And all the allurements of the town, 

I did not feel, till here I dwelt, 

How terrible the mighty main, 
Nor think how bright Orion's belt 

Gleams nightly on thy drowned and slain. 

Oh, give me back my Wayland .meads, 
Where Sudbury's loitering eddies glide, 
37 



38 DOWN BY THE SHORE IN DECEMBER 

And one long line of lilies leads 

My skiff to Concord's harmless tide ! 

There let me with protecting woods 

Shield my reposing age, afar 
From the wild fury of the floods, 

To watch in peace that evening star. 



THE PEOPLE OF THE DEEP 

Never hath navigator found 

A nook where mortals have not been ; 
The floods are full, — all seas abound 

With myriads of our kin ; 
And more humanity lies hidden 

Fathomless leagues below the surge, 
Than o'er its surface, tempest-ridden, 

Their peopled navies urge. 

Becalmed at midnight, on the deep, 

Soon as our second watch was set, 
On the damp deck I dropped asleep, 

All troubles to forget ; 
But in my brain, that would not slumber, 

Loved forms and lovely faces thronged, 
Friends past my power to name or number, 

And some to heaven belonged. 

But one sweet shape, of beauty strange, 
Broke my bright vision with a kiss ; 

I started, — ah ! the bitter change, 
From blessed dreams to this ! 
39 



40 THE PEOPLE OF THE DEEP 

For, ah ! how silent, dark, and lonely 
These melancholy deserts are : 

No life, save yon tired helmsman only, 
Nor light, save here and there a star. 

The drowsy mariner's dull tread 

Is the sole sound that wakes mine ears ; 
How hushed ! how desolate and dead 
Creation's void appears ! 
" Thou dumb, thou lonely, lonely ocean ! " 

Chilled by my fancies, I began, — 
" Fearful in stillness as in motion, 
Thou art no place for man ! 

" Earth's wildernesses, everywhere, 

Teem with some records of our race ; 
Even waste Palenque's fragments bear 

Life's annals on their face. 
But you, ye solitary waters ! 

What memories can ye recall? 
Better to speak of crime and slaughters 

Than tell no tale at all. 

" Hark ! to that heavy-breathing sound, 
That seems the moaning of the sea, 
Or of some whale on whose own ground 
Rude trespassers are we. 



THE PEOPLE OF THE DEEP 41 

This is Leviathan's dominion, 

Where man is rash to stray ; 
Ah, might I borrow but thy pinion, 

Swift sea-gull ! for a day, 

" This element, for monsters made, 

Full swiftly would I leave behind, 
And friends amid the forest shade 

In gentler creatures find." 
Thus musing, sleep again stole o'er me, 

And voices, in my second dream, 
Came from a throng which rose before me, — 

" How falsely dost thou deem ! 

" Behold ! thy brethren fill the waves ; 

All the great gidfs are amply stored." 
And, lo ! from forth their coral caves 

The ocean dwellers poured. 
" We are the people of the waters ! " 

Faintly they gurgled in mine ear ; 
" Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, 

Old age and youth are here." 

The scaly multitudes that swarm 

In the green shelter of the bay, 
Chased by the fury of the storm, . 

Less numerous were than they. 



42 THE PEOPLE OF THE DEEP 

They came in armies, thickly crowding, 

Fleshless and dripping, bleached and bare ; 

Sea-plants their bony bosoms shrouding, 
Sands glistening in their hair. 

" See ! see ! " they cried, "what legions strew 

The sparkling pavement of the brine ! 
Our ancient universe below 

Is populous as thine. 
But wheresoe'er war's banners flying 

Have brought the fleets of England's host, 
There, foe by foe, together lying, 

Our nations cluster most. 

" Many and large our cities are, 

Wide scattered over ocean's floor ; 
Some of us dwell near Trafalgar, 

And some at Elsinore. 
Some that were enemies, now brothers, 

Linger about the immortal isle 
Of Grecian Salamis, and others 

Rest in the freshness of the Nile." 

" Home ! home ! poor spectres," I replied, 
" Till the seas dry at trump of doom ; 
Earth and her waters, far and wide, 
Are only one huge tomb. 



THE PEOPLE OF THE DEEP 43 

Till now I thought the main's chief treasure 
Was pearls and heaps of jewels rare ; 

But, ah ! what wealth, beyond all measure, 
In mine own shape lies there ! " 

Then, musing on the valor, worth, 

And beauty dwelling in the deep, 
And the mean brood that God's good earth 

In their possession keep, 
I almost wished my parting minute 

Might find me somewhere on the wave, 
That I might join the brave within it, 

And no man dig my grave. 



MARY BOOTH 

What shall we do now, Mary being dead, 
Or say or write that shall express the half ? 

What can we do but pillow that fair head, 

And let the Spring-time write her epitaph ? — 

As it will soon, in snowdrop, violet, 

Wind-flower and columbine and maiden's tear ; 
Each letter of that pretty alphabet, 

That spells in flowers the pageant of the year. 

She was a maiden for a man to love ; 

She was a woman for a husband's life ; 
One that has learned to value, far above 

The name of love, the sacred name of wife. 

Her little life-dream, rounded so with sleep, 
Had all there is of life, except gray hairs, — - 

Hope, love, trust, passion and devotion deep ; 
And that mysterious tie a Mother bears. 



44 



MARY BOOTH 45 

She hath fulfilled her promise and hath passed ; 

Set her down gently at the iron door ! 
Eyes look on that loved image for the last : 

Now cover it in earth, — her earth no more. 



HER EPITAPH 

The handful here, that once was Mary's earth, 
Held, while it breathed, so beautiful a soul, 

That, when she died, all recognized her birth, 
And had their sorrow in serene control. 

" Not here ! not here ! " to every mourner's heart 
The wintry wind seemed whispering round her 
bier ; 

And when the tomb-door opened, with a start 
We heard it echoed from within, — " Not here ! " 

Shouldst thou, sad pilgrim, who mayst hither 
pass, 

Note in these flowers a delicater hue, 
Should spring come earlier to this hallowed grass, 

Or the bee later linger on the dew, — 

Know that her spirit to her body lent 

Such sweetness, grace, as only goodness can ; 

That even her dust, and this her monument, 

Have yet a spell to stay one lonely man, — 
46 



HER EPITAPH 47 

Lonely through life, but looking for the day 
When what is mortal of himself shall sleep, 

When human passion shall have passed away, 
And Love no longer be a thing to weep. 



LOUISA'S GRAVE 

Deep in the city's noisy heart 
A sacred spot there lies ; 

Amid the tumult, yet apart, 
And shut from worldly eyes. 

There, just beyond the chapel shade, 
Hid in a clovered mound, 

Enough of innocence is laid 
To sanctify the ground. 

Born, as the violets are, in May, 
With song of birds she came, 

And when she sighed her soul away, 
The season was the same. 

It seemed in heaven benignly meant 

To give this virgin birth 
When all things beautiful are sent 

To bless the budding earth. 

But if her birth befitted then 
The spring-time and the bloom, 

48 



LOUISA'S GRAVE 49 

Why, when that gladness came again, 
Why went she to the tomb ? 

Oh, let not impious grief accuse 

Kind Nature of a wrong ! 
Her form in flowers and fragrant dews 

Shall be exhaled ere long. 

Her beauty was akin to them ; 

Their elements combined 
To shape the young, consummate stem, 

Whose blossom was her mind. 

And now the blossom is with God ; 

Soon shall the sun and showers 
Wake from the slumber of the sod 

All that was ever ours. 

No weary winter's frozen sleep, 

Under the torpid snows, 
Her undecaying frame can keep 

In the clay's cold repose ; 

For all her mortal part shall melt, 

In other forms to rise, 
Before her spirit shall have dwelt 

One summer in the skies. 



TO A YOUNG GIRL DYING 

WITH A GIFT OF FRESH PALM-LEAVES 

This is Palm Sunday : mindful of the day, 
I bring palm branches, found upon my way : 
But these will wither ; thine shall never die, — 
The sacred palms thou bearest to the sky ! 
Dear little saint, though but a child in years, 
Older in wisdom than my gray compeers ! 
We doubt and tremble, — ice, with bated breath, 
Talk of this mystery of life and death : 
Thou, strong in faith, art gifted to conceive 
Beyond thy years, and teach us to believe ! 

Then take my palms, triumphal, to thy home, 
Gentle white palmer, never more to roam ! 
Only, sweet sister, give me, ere thou go'st, 
Thy benediction, — for my love thou know'st ! 
We, too, are pilgrims, traveling towards the 

shrine : 
Pray that our pilgrimage may end like thine J 

50 



THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 

Amid the aisle, apart, there stood 

A mourner like the rest ; 
And while the solemn rites were said, 
He fashioned into verse his mood 

That would not be repressed. 

Why did they bring him home, 
Bright jewel set in lead ? 

Oh, bear the sculptor back to Rome, 
And lay him with the mighty dead, — 

With Adonai's, and the rest 
Of all the young and good and fair, 

That drew the milk of English breast, 
And their last sigh in Latian air ! 

Lay him with Raphael, unto whom 

Was granted Rome's most lasting tomb ; 
For many a lustre, many an aeon, 
He might sleep w r ell in the Pantheon, 

Deep in the sacred city's womb, 

The smoke and splendor and the stir of Rome. 
51 



52 THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 

Lay him 'neath Diocletian's dome, 
Blessed Saint Mary of the Angels, 
Near to tliat house in which he dwelt, — 

House that to many seemed a home, 
So much with him they loved and felt. 

We were his guests a hundred times ; 
We loved him for his genial ways ; 

He gave me credit for my rhymes, 
And made me blush with praise. 

Ah ! there be many histories 

That no historian writes, 
And friendship hath its mysteries 

And consecrated nights ; 
Amid the busy days of pain, 
Wear of hand, and tear of brain, 
Weary midnight, weary morn, 
Years of struggle paid with scorn ; — 

Yet oft amid all this despair, 
Long rambles in the autumn days 
O'er Appian or Flaminian Ways, 

Bright moments snatched from care, 
When loose as buffaloes on the wild Campagna 

We roved and dined on crust and curds, 

Olives, thin wine, and thinner birds, 
And woke the echoes of divine Romagna ; 

And then returning late, 



THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 53 

After long knocking at the Lateran gate, 
Suppers and nights of gods ; and then 
Mornings that made us new-born men ; 
Rare nights at the Minerva tavern, 
With Orvieto from the Cardinal's cavern ; 
Free nights, but fearless and without reproof, — 
For Bayard's word ruled Beppo's roof. 

'0 Rome ! what memories awake, 

When Crawford's name is said, 
Of days and friends for whose dear sake 
That path of Hades unto me 

Will have no more of dread 
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice ! 

O Crawford ! husband, father, brother 

Are in that name, that little word ! 
Let me no more my sorrow smother ; 

Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred. 

O Death, thou teacher true and rough ! 

Full oft I fear that we have erred, 
And have not loved enough ; 
But oh, ye friends, this side of Acheron, 

Who cling to me to-day, 
I shall not know my love till ye are gone 
And I am gray ! 



54 THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 

Fair women with your loving eyes, 
Old men that once my footsteps led, 

Sweet children, — much as all I prize, 
Until the sacred dust of death be shed 
Upon each dear and venerable head, 
I cannot love you as I love the dead ! 

But now, the natural man being sown, 
We can more lucidly behold 
The spiritual one ; 

For we, till time shall end, 
Full visibly shall see our friend 
In all his hand did mould, — 
That worn and patient hand that lies so cold ! 

When on some blessed studious day 
To my loved library I wend my way, 
Amid the forms that give the Gallery grace 
His thought in that pale poet I shall trace, — 
Keen Orpheus, with his eyes 
Fixed deep in ruddy hell, 
Seeking amid those lurid skies 
The wife he loved so well, — 
And feel that still therein I see 
All that was in my Master's thought, 
And, in that constant hand wherewith he wrought, 
The eternal type of constancy. 



THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 55 

Thou marble husband ! might there be 
More of flesh and blood like thee ! 

Or if, in Music's festive hall, 
I come to cheat me of my care, 

Amid the swell, the dying fall, 
His genius greets me there. 
O man of bronze ! thy solemn air — 

Best soother of a troubled brain — 

Floods me with memories, and again 

As thou stand'st visibly to men, 
Beloved musician ! so once more 
Crawford comes back that did thy form restore. 



Well, — requiescat ! let him pass ! 

Good mourners, go your several ways ! 
He needs no further rite, nor mass, 

Nor eulogy, who best could praise 
Himself in marble and in brass ; 

Yet his best monument did raise, 
Not in those perishable things 

That men eternal deem, — 

The pride of palaces and kings, — 
But in such works as must avail him there, 



56 THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 

With Him who, from the extreme 
Love that was in his breast, 
Said, " Come, all ye that heavy burdens bear, 
And I will give you rest ! " 



"INTO THE NOISELESS COUNTRY " 

Into the noiseless country Annie went, 
Among the silent people where no sound 

Of wheel or voice or implement — no roar 
Of wind or billow moves the tranquil air : 

And oft at midnight when my strength is spent 

And day's delirium in the lull is drowned 
Of deepening darkness, as I kneel before 

Her palm and cross, comes to my soul this prayer, 
That partly brings me back to my content, 

" Oh, that hushed forest ! — soon may I be 
there ! " 

57 



STEUART'S BURIAL 

The bier is ready and the mourners wait, 
The funeral car stands open at the gate. 
Bring down our brother ; bear him gently, too ; 
So, friends, he always bore himself with you. 
Down the sad staircase, from the darkened room, 
For the first time, he comes in silent gloom. 
Who ever left this hospitable door 
Without his smile and warm " good-by," before? 
Now we for him the parting word must say 
To the mute threshold whence we bear his clay. 

The slow procession lags upon the road, — 
'T is heavy hearts that make the heavy load ; 
And all too brightly glares the burning noon 
On the dark pageant — be it ended soon ! 
The quail is piping and the locust sings, — 
O grief, thy contrast with these joyful things ! 
What pain to see, amid our task of woe, 
The laughing river keep its wonted flow ! 
His hawthorns there, his proudly waving corn, 
And all so flourishing — and so forlorn ! 

58 



STEUARTS BURIAL 59 

His new-built cottage, too, so fairly planned, 
Whose chimney ne'er shall smoke at his command. 

Two sounds were heard, that on the spirit fell 
With sternest moral : one the passing bell ! 
The other told the history of the hour — 
Life's fleeting triumph, mortal pride and power. 
Two trains there met : the iron-sinewed horse 
And the black hearse — the engine and the corse ! 
Haste on your track, you fiery-winged steed ! 
I hate your presence and approve your speed ; 
Fly ! with your eager freight of breathing men, 
And leave these mourners to their march again ! 
Swift as my wish, they broke their slight delay, 
And life and death pursued their separate way. 

The solemn service in the church was held, 
Bringing strange comfort as the anthem swelled, 
And back we bore him to his long repose, 
Where his great elm its evening shadow throws, — 
A sacred spot ! There often he hath stood, 
Showed us his harvests and ])ronounced them good ; 
And we may stand, with eyes no longer dim, 
To watch new harvests and remember him. 

Peace to thee, Steuart ! — and to .us ! The All- Wise 
Would ne'er have found thee readier for the skies : 



60 STEUARTS BURIAL 

In his large love He kindly waits the best, 

The fittest mood, to summon every guest ; 

So in his prime our dear companion went, 

When the young soul is easy to repent ; 

No long purgation shall he now require 

In black remorse, in penitential fire ; 

From what few frailties might have stained his morn 

Our tears may wash him pure as he was born. 



EPITAPH UPON MY FRIEND, DAVID STEUART ROBERTSON 
FROM HIS GRAVESTONE AT LANCASTER 

Here Steuart sleeps ; and should some brother Scot 
Wander this way, and pause upon the spot, 
He need not ask, now life's poor show is o'er, 
What arms he carried, or what plaid he wore : 
So small the value of illustrious birth, 
Brought to this solemn, last assay of earth ! 
Yet, unreproved, his epitaph might say 
A royal soul was wrapt in Steuart's clay, 
And generous actions consecrate his mound, 
More than all titles, though of kingly sound. 



ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 

TWENTY-FOURTH OF OCTOBER, 1852 

Comes there a frigate home ? what mighty bark 
Returns with torn, but still triumphant sails ? 

Such peals awake the wondering Sabbath — hark ! 
How the dread echoes die among the vales ! 

What ails the morning, that the misty sun 
Looks wan and troubled in the autumn air ? 

Dark over Marshfield ! — 't was the minute gun : 
God ! has it come that we foreboded there ? 

The woods at midnight heard an angel's tread ; 

The sere leaves rustled in his withering breath ; 
The night was beautiful with stars ; we said, 

" This is the harvest moon," — 't was thine, O 
Death ! 

Gone, then, the splendor of October's day ! 

A single night, without the aid of frost, 
Has turned the gold and crimson into gray, 

And the world's glory, with our own, is lost. 
61 



62 ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 

A little while, and we rode forth to greet 
His coming with glad music, and his eye 

Drew many captives, as along the street 

His peaceful triumph passed, unquestioned, by. 

Now there are moanings by the desolate shore 

That are not ocean's ; by the patriot's bed 
Hearts throb for him whose noble heart no 
more — 

Break off the rhyme, for sorrow cannot stop 

To trim itself with phrases for the ear ; 
Too fast the tears upon the paper drop : 

Fast as the leaves are falling on his bier, 

Thick as the hopes that clustered round his 
name, 
While yet he walked with us, a pilgrim here. 

He was our prophet, our majestic oak, 

That, like Dodona's, in Thesprotian land, 
Whose leaves were oracles, divinely spoke. 

We called him giant, for in every part 

He seemed colossal ; in his port and speech, 
In his large brain and in his larger heart. 



ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 63 

And when his name upon the roll we saw 

Of those who govern, then we felt secure, 
Because we knew his reverence for the law. 

So the young master of the Roman realm 

Discreetly thought, we cannot wander far 
From the true course, with Ulpian at the helm. 

But slowly to this loss our sense awakes ; 

To know what space it in the forum filled, 
See what a gap the temple's ruin makes ! 

Kings have their dynasties, but not the mind ; 

Csesar leaves other Caesars to succeed, 
But Wisdom, dying, leaves no heir behind. 

Who now shall stand the regent at the wheel ? 
Who knows the dread machinery ? who hath 
skiU 
Our course through oceans unsurveyed to feel ? 

Her mournful tidings Albion lately sent, 

How he, the victor in so many fields, 
Fell, but not fighting, in the fields of Kent ; 

The chief whose conduct in the lofty scene 

Where England stood up for the world in arms, 
Gave her victorious name to England's queen. 



64 ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 

But peaceful Britain knows, amid her grief, 

She could spare now the soldier and his 
sword ; 
What can our councils do without our chief ? 

Blest are the peacemakers ! — and he was ours, 

Winning, by force of argument, the right 
Between two kindred, more than rival powers. 

Resume the rhyme, and end the funeral strain ; 

Dying, he asked for song, — he did not slight 
The harmony of numbers, — let the main 

Sing round his grave great anthems, day and 
night. 

The autumn rains are falling on his head, 

The snows of winter soon will shroud the 
shore, 

The spring with violets will adorn his bed, 

And summer shall return, — but he, no more ! 

We have no high cathedral for his rest, 

Dim with proud banners and the dust of 
years ; 

All we can give him is New England's breast 
To lay his head on, — and his country's tears. 



EMERSON 

O VOICELESS water loitering down 

To wed the Assabet and take thy name, 
Taciturn stream ! from concord, in the town 

Where Hawthorne's hawthorns grew to fame, 
(And haply one may yet survive !) 

Into thy wave receive a pilgrim's tear 
For one just passed ! partly a poet-soul 

And part a priest-one errant from his sphere, 
Too large to serve the little for the whole, 

To whom the vanished Pans seemed still alive ; 

Who, shunning steeples and the crowd, to dwell 

Remote, in meadows of his boyhood's love, 
Turning his back on heaven, as erst on hell, 
Meek lover of the good, though under spell, 

Found Brahma's blessing in the sinless grove. 
A certain space our Master went astray 

From the known path, to wander with the rest 
Of those who, dazzled by some sundog's ray, 
Sincerely fancying they beheld the day 

Dawn against nature's order in the West, 
65 



66 EMERSON 

Could couple Christ with Gautama, and bound 
The Kock of Ages with a dial's round. 

Not " over-soul " nor too much learning led 
These gentle pagans to their straw-built shed, 
But over-hope, gay substitute for truth 
When life's denial breaks the dreams of youth ; 
Hope of some wondrous Counsellor to come 
To strike the oracles of Delphi dumb, 
And send back Simon to his nets again — 
" The fisher " still, but nevermore of men : 
Well might this loftiest thinker of them all 
Have smiled to find himself their new St. Paul ! 

He found the way. Men gathered at his grave 
In Sleepy Hollow, and the word " forgive " 

Was said on bended knee. Fine soul and brave ! 

If quaint in rhyme, if no logician gave 
Laws to thy thinking, inly sw r eet and wise, 

Long in these woodlands may thine image live ! 
And many a musing Briton's heart 

Shall melt, as oft with moistening eyes 
He lets his noisy train depart 
To linger where, — O sacred art ! 

In yonder grave thy Druid lies. 



ANDREW 

Ermine or blazonry, he knew them not, 

Nor cloth of gold, for Duty was his Queen ; 

But this he knew, — a soul without a spot, 

Judgment untarnished, and a conscience clean. 

In peace, in war, a worker day and night, 
Laborious chieftain ! toiling at his lamp ; 

The children had the splendor of the fight, — 
Home was his battle-field, his room the camp, 

Without a wound, without a stain he fell, 
But with life rounded, all his acts complete ; 

And seldom History will have to tell 

Of one whom Cato could more gladly greet. 

Among the just his welcome should be warm, 
Nor will New England let his memory cease ; 

He was our peacemaker, who, 'mid the storm 
Of the great conflict, served the Prince of 
Peace. 



67 



EVERETT 

So fell our statesman, — for lie stood sublime 
On that proud pedestal, a people's heart, — 
As when some image, through the touch of time, 
That long was reverenced in the public mart ; 
As some tall clock-tower, that was wont to tell 
The hour of duty to the young and olden, 
With tongue most musical of every bell, 
Bends to its base, and is no more beholden ! 
So fell our Everett : more like some great elm, 
Lord of the grove, but something set apart, 
That all the tempests could not overwhelm, 
Nor all the winters of his seventy years, 
But on some peaceful midnight bursts his heart. 
And in the morning men behold the wreck, 
(Some with gray hairs, who cannot hold their 

tears), 
But in the giant timber find no speck 
Nor unsound spot, but only wholesome wood. 
No secret worm consuming at the core 
The stem that ever seemed so fair and good : 
And aged men that knew the tree of yore 



EVERETT 69 

When but a sapling, promising full well, 
Say to each other, " This majestic plant 
Came to full growth ; it made no idle vaunt ; 
From its own weight, without a flaw, it fell ! " 



ASPROMONTE 

Beauty made glad the day, — and sadness glad ; 
So, without sorrow, to the grove we wandered 
Where lie the loved ones in their myrtle bed. 
Till then I never knew peace-parted souls 
Could unto souls on earth give benediction 
Of peace like that which they enjoy in heaven. 
For surely, as we sat there in the sun, 
On the fresh turf, there seemed a " Pax vobis- 

cum" 
Descending on us with each dropping leaf ; 
And on their graves I think, almost, we laughed, 
Recalling words of theirs, and pretty customs, 
Until Death seemed, as 't were, a pleasant thing. 
And when we mused, " At home we miss them 

so!" 
One said, " They are at home, and He is with 

them 
Who said so sweetly, ' Children, come to me ! ' 
And come to me, ye heavy-laden, worn, 
And half -spent soldiers of the bitter battle, 
And I will nurse you in my hospital. 
The hospitality of heaven is mine : 

70 



ASPROMONTE 71 

I am the one Physician, — yours forever ; 

And when your wounds are healed, we dwell as 

friends 
In the same mansion, and in purer air 
Than where you came from: that was fraught 

with peril — 
Oh, most destructive ! I was also there.' ' 
At this there seemed a whispering from beneath 
A certain mound that bare the name of " Mother ; " 
And we all heard a voice as plain as this. 



THE VOICE 

Matters nothing to me now 
Who dispraised or praises me ; 

I am gone where they aud thou, 
Fondest friend ! ere long must be. 

Dread thou to severely scan 

Blame that is or may have been ; 

Meeter Judge there is for man 
Than his fellow-soul of sin. 

I have known in evil hearts 

Rays of goodness, here and there ; 
And the saint, when he departs, 

Hath full need of human prayer. 



72 THE VOICE 

All are brothers ; and the sole 
Hope of your hereafter rest 

Is that Heaven may bless the whole, 
For the One who was the Blest ; 

By that word He spake for them 

Who had speared the Sinless through, 
u Father, spare Thou to condemn 

Souls that know not what they do." 



TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

IN RETURN FOR A TALBOTYPE PICTURE OF VENICE 

Poet and friend ! if any gift could bring 
A joy like that of listening while you sing, 
'T were such as this, — memorial of the days, 
When Tuscan airs inspired more tender lays ; 
When the gray Apennine, or Lombard plain, 
Sunburnt, or spongy with autumnal rain, 
Mingled perchance, as first they met your sight, 
Some drops of disappointment with delight ; 
When, rudely wakened from the dream of years, 
You heard Velino thundering in your ears, 
And fancy drooped, — until Romagna's wine 
Brought you new visions, thousand-fold more fine ; 
When first in Florence, hearkening to the flow 
Of Arno's midnight music, hoarse below, 
You thought of home, and recollected those 
Who loved your verse, but hungered for your 

prose, 
And, more than all, the sonnets that you made ; 
Longed for the letters, — ah, too poorly paid ! 

73 



74 TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Thanks for thy boon ! I look, and I am there ; 
The soaring belfry guides me to the square ; 
The punctual doves, that wait the stroke of one, 
Flutter above me and becloud the sun ; 
'T is Venice ! Venice ! and with joy I put 
In Adria's wave, incredulous, my foot ; 
I smell the seaweed, and again I hear 
The click of oars, the screaming gondolier. 
Ha ! the Rialto, — Dominic ! a boat ; 
Now in a gondola to dream and float : 
Pull the slight cord and draw the silk aside, 
And read the city's history as we glide ; 
For strangely here, where all is strange, indeed, 
Not he who runs, but he who swims, may read. 
Mark now, albeit the moral make thee sad, 
What stately palaces these merchants had ! 
Proud houses once ! — Grimani and Pisani, 
Spinelli, Foscari, Giustiniani ; 
Behold their homes and monuments in one ! 
They writ their names in water, and are gone. 
My voyage is ended, all the round is past, — 
See ! the twin columns and the bannered mast, 
The domes, the steeds, the Lion's winged sign, 
" Peace to thee, Mark ! evangelist of mine ! " 

Poetic art ! reserved for prosy times 

Of great inventions and of little rhymes ; 



TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 75 

For us, to whom a wisely ordering Heaven 
Ether for Lethe, wires for wings, has given ; 
Whom vapors work for, yet who scorn a ghost, 
Amid enchantments disenchanted most ; 
Whose light, whose fire, whose messages had been 
In blessed Urban's liberal days a sin, 
Sure, in Damascus, any reasoning Turk 
Would count your Talbotype a sorcerer's work. 

Strange power ! that thus to actual presence brings 
The shades of distant or departed things, 
That calls dead Thebes or Athens up, or Aries, 
To show like spectres on the banks of Charles ! 
But we receive this marvel with the rest ; 
Nothing is new or wondrous in the West ; 
Life 's all a miracle, — and every age 
To the great wonder-book but adds a page. 



TO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Think not that this enchanted isle 
Wherein I dwell, some days a king. 

Postpones till June its tardy smile, 
And only knows imagined spring. 

Not yet my lilies are in bloom ; 

But lo ! my cherry, bridal-white, 
Whose sweetness fills my sunny room, 

The bees, and me, with one delight. 

And on the brink of Lanham Brook 
The laughing cowslips catch mine eye, 

As on the bridge I stop to look 
At the stray blossoms loitering by. 

Our almond-willow waves its plumes 
In contrast with the dark-haired pine, 

And in the morning sun perfumes 
The lane almost like summer's vine. 

Dear Poet ! shouldst thou tread with me, 
Even in the spring, these woodland ways, 
76 



TO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 77 

Under thy foot the violet see, 
And overhead the maple sprays, 

Thou mightst forego thy Charles's claim, 
To wander by our stream awhile : 

So should these meadows grow to fame, 
And all the Muses haunt our Isle. 



WITH A VOLUME OF KEATS 

" His name was writ in water." Yes, too young 
The minstrel perished to have earned a name, 

To face the cold blight of the critic's tongue, 
And his fresh laurels cankered ere they came. 

Loved Adonais ? martyr to the boon 

Which the gods gave, or promised, at his birth ! 
Think, — in lamenting that he died so soon, 

How few such memories live so long on earth ! 

Full oft must obloquy precede renown : 

Ere the saint's picture wear its ring of light, 

The living head must feel the thorny crown ; 

The stars ! — where were they, if there came 
no Night ? 

Know, love, the poet must not yield alone 
Honey and roses, — fire must dwell within ; 

The fairest flesh must underneath have bone, 
The fiercest beast may wear the softest skin. 



78 



WITH A VOLUME OF KEATS 

And something rough and resolute and sour 
Must with the sweetness of the soul combine ; 

For, although gentleness be part of power, 
V T is only strength makes gentleness divine. 



THE BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT BURNS 

A lowly roof of simple thatch, — 

No home of pride, of pomp, and sin, — 

So freely let us lift the latch, 

The willing latch that says, " Come in." 

Plain dwelling this ! a narrow door, 
No carpet by soft sandals trod, 

But just for peasant's feet a floor, — 
Small kingdom for a child of God ! 

Yet here was Scotland's noblest born, 
And here Apollo chose to light ; 

And here those large eyes hailed the morn 
That had for beauty such a sight ! 

There, as the glorious infant lay, 

Some angel fanned him with his wing, 

And whispered, " Dawn upon the day 
Like a new sun ! go forth and sing! " 



80 



THE BIRTHDAY OF ROBERT BURNS 81 

He rose and sang, and Scotland heard ; 

The round world echoed with his song, 
And hearts in every land were stirred 

With love, and joy, and scorn of wrong. 

Some their cold lips disdainful curled, 
Yet the sweet lays would many learn ; 

But he went singing through the world, 
In most melodious unconcern. 

For flowers will grow, and showers will fall, 
And clouds will travel o'er the sky ; 

And the great God, who cares for all, 
He will not let his darlings die. 

But they shall sing in spite of men, 

In spite of poverty and shame, 
And show the world the poet's pen 

May match the sword in winning fame. 



THE PENNYROYAL 

I marked this morning, by the wood, 

What way the pennyroyal grew, 
Amid the waste of snow that stood 

Deep on the path which well I knew ; 
For every slender stem upreared 

Its head within a little round, 
In which no leaf nor blade appeared 

Save its sweet self from the bare ground. 
Its own warm heart had nestled there, 

A sheltered home wherein to thrive, 
Looking so stately, fresh, and fair, 

And where all else was dead, alive. 
There, in its charmed hold serene, 

And strong and fragrant as it rose, 
It made me think of my soul's queen, 

Whom I from all the world had chose. 
I thought of one whose heart of love, 

Where'er she dwells, her circle finds ; 
Amid life's frost, who soars above 

The weariness of vacant minds ; 
Who rules her little realm, content, 

Not caring for a large applause, 
82 



THE PENNYROYAL 83 

Still finding in all hearts consent 
To make her wishes more than laws. 

Go, fragrant sprays, and touch her hand, 
Or press her lip, if it may be ; 

May her charmed circle soon expand 
Enough to find there room for me ! 



JULY 

Orion dimly burns to-night, 

I miss the starry Seven, 
And with a mild restraint of light 

Arcturus walks the heaven ; 

The frog pipes feebly in the fen, 
The whippoorwill is faint 

With chanting to regardless men 
His petulant complaint. 

So June is over, and the race 
Of fire — th' electric fly — 

Has come her obsequies to grace, 
And welcome in July. 

The year's great miracle is done, — 
The wonder of the spring, — 

And soon the liberal-handed sun 
His promised fruit shall bring. 

Like some fresh marble, the sublime 
Work of immortal hands ! 

84 



JULY 85 

Nature before us, in her prime, 
Almost completed stands. 

And now the dreaming eye foresees 

The sculptor's final stroke, 
The golden heaps beneath the trees, 

The purpling of the oak. 

Ah ! might we never forward look 

Or be like insects blind, 
And in the sunshine and the brook 

Sufficient glory find. 



THE SCALLOP-SHELL 

I came to the city that looks towards the sea, 

But found on my table no scallop for me ! 

There were bills from the butcher, and billets from 

girls, 
Things common as pebbles, and precious as pearls ; 
There were volumes of poetry, volumes of prose, — 
By fifty new poets whom nobody knows ; 
There were things fair to look at, and things sweet 

to smell, 
Engravings and nosegays, — but devil a shell ! 

Now, my lady, I teased her with many a prayer, 
When she went to the ocean, to think of me there, 
And to write me a letter at Sudbury Oaks, — 
A page full of gossip, and all the best jokes ! 
This, indeed, she denied me, but whispered, " Write 

me, 
And then I will think of you, down by the sea." 
" Oh, think of me everywhere, lady — farewell ! 
But to show that you think of me, send me a 

shell" 

86 



THE SCALLOP-SHELL 87 

Then I went to the greenwood, — I slept in the 

shade 
Of the midsummer branches that sang serenade ; 
There I breathed the fresh meadows, I drank the 

warm vine, 
I tasted the perfume that weeps from the pine, 
And I lay by the brookside, a^listening the bee, 
And was lulled by the locust, — but thought of the 

sea ; 
I picked the green apples by chance as they fell, 
And I fed me with berries, — but sighed for my 

shell. 

Back and forth to the wood with no song on my 

lips, 
Back and forth to the city to gaze on the ships, 
To eye the tall vessels and smell of the sea, — 
But scallop or cockle comes never to me ! 
I wander at daybreak, I sit late at night, 
And I think many things, but have no heart to 

write ; 
No heart, dear, to speak of ; 't is mute in its cell : — 
Could Apollo make music deprived of his shell ? 



THE LAST GENTIAN 

See ! I survive because I bowed my head, 
Hearing the Snow's first footfall in the air ; 

I felt his cold kiss on my cheek with dread, 
And to my sister said, Beware ! 

And stooped beneath my bank and let him pass. 

Next morn the brook was glass : 

My simple sister, in her pride, 

Disdained to bow her head, so drooped and died. 

Last gentian of the withering year ! 

Left for Augusta's hand, 
Thou shalt not linger shivering here 

By the bleak north wind fanned, 
Until thy blue eye turn to gray, 
And from thy lids the lashes fall away. 
I will not leave thee, loving thee so well, 

To face the ruin of November's air ; 
But thou shalt go where Summer still doth 
dwell, 
Soft light and bird-song, — all things bright or 
fair, — 

88 



THE LAST GENTIAN 89 

And happy thoughts and wise thoughts fed with 

books, 
And gentle speech, and loving looks 

From eyes that still make sunshine everywhere. 
For know, thou trembling stem, that not alone 

My lady bears the summer in her name : 
Her heart is of that season ; and her tone, 

When she shall greet thee, — guessing whence it 
came, — 
And the sweet welcome of her smile 
Thy simple soul shall so beguile, 
That hadst thou lips as lids, those lips would say 
The day I found thee was thy sunniest day. 



ON A MAGNOLIA FLOWER 

Memokial of my former days ! 

Magnolia, as I scent thy breath, 
And on thy pallid beauty gaze, 

I feel not far from death. 

So much hath happened ! and so much 

The tomb hath claimed of what was mine ! 

Thy fragrance moves me with a touch 
As from a hand divine : 

So many dead ! so many wed ! 

Since first by this Magnolia's tree, 
I pressed a gentle hand, and said 

A word no more for me ! 

Lady, who sendest from the South 
This frail, pale token of the past, 

I press the petals to my mouth, 
And sigh — as 't were my last. 



90 



ON A MAGNOLIA FLOWER 91 

Oh, love, we live, but many fell ! 

The world 's a wreck, but we survive ! 
Say, rather, still on earth we dwell, 

But gray at thirty-five ! 



TO A LILAC 



lilac, in whose purple well 
Youth in perpetuo doth dwell, 
My fancy feels thy fragrant spell. 

II 

Of all that morning dewdrops feed, 
All flowers of garden, field, or mead, 
Thou art the first in childhood's creed, 

in 

And even to me thy breath, in spring, 
Hath power, a little while, to bring 
Back to my heart its blossoming. 

IV 

1 seem again, with pupil's pace, 
And happy, shining, morning-face, 
Bound schoolward, running learning's race. 



92 



TO A LILAC 93 



Thou, too, recall'st the tender time, 

After my primer, ere my prime, 

When love was born and life was rhyme : 

VI 

My morning ramble, all alone ; 
My moonlit walk by haunted stone ; 
My love, that ere it fledged was flown ! 

VII 

At noon, tired out with hateful task, 
I fling aside my worldling's mask, 
And for my bunch of lilac ask. 

VIII 

At vesper-time, Celestial tea 
Hath no refreshment like to thee, 
Whose breath is nourishment for me. 

IX 

At midnight, when my friends are gone, 
And I sit down to ponder on 
The day, what it hath lost or won, 



94 TO A LILAC 



Thy perf ume, like a flageolet 
That once, by dark Bolsena's lake, 

What time the sun made golden set, 

I heard (and seem to hear it yet) ! 
A thousand memories doth awake 
Of busy boyhood's vanished powers ; 

Of young ambition, flushed with praise ; 
Of old companions, and of hours 

That had the sunshine of whole days ; 

Of Italy, and Roman ways ; 
Of Tuscan ladies, courteous, fair, 
And kind as beautiful — forbear ! 
O Memory — those impassioned eyes ! 
Beware ! for that way madness lies ! 

XI 

Sweet lilac, thou art come to June, 
And all our orioles are in tune : 
Thy doom is — to be withering soon. 

XII 

And so, farewell ! for other flowers 
Must have their day ; and mortal powers 
Cannot love all things at all hours. 



TO A LILAC 95 



XIII 



Soon I shall have my flower de luce, 
And the proud peony, whose use 
It is to teach me pride's abuse. 



XIV 



For proud am I as proud can be ; 
But when that crimson gaud I see, 
My lilac's memory comes to me. 



THE TAKING OF SEBASTOPOL 

BY AN AMERICAN, ABOARD THE BOSTON SHIP SULTANA 



I sailed by Tenedos, in sight of Troy, 
My Homer in my hand, but in my heart 

Little remembrance of the past, or joy 
In the sad present or the poet's art. 

A ship went by that bore my country's name, 
"The Great Kepublic," and a moment's thrill 

Flashed through my breast, but vanished as it 
came, 
For in that bark an Iliad was of ill. 

A thousand wounded soldiers in her deeps 

Lay groaning, bleeding ; scarce a man but bore 

His deathmark on him. Happy he that sleeps 
There where he fell, beside the Pontic shore. 

And farther onward as we stretched our sail 
Along the sacred Hellespont, a gleam 
96 



THE TAKING OF SEBASTOPOL 97 

Came in the night, and mingled with a wail 

That seemed the voice of the complaining stream. 

Black messengers of death were on the wing, 
Like clouds containing tempests, darkly driven 

By autumn winds — alas ! the news they bring 
The doom that took the gentle chief to heaven. 

Farewell, brave heart ! if not the brightest sword, 
Set of true temper, thou wert of the best : 

Considerate chieftain, unpresuming Lord, 
Fitzroy ! good angels bear thee to thy rest ! 

We mourned with England, if the vulgar swarm 
Read of her sorrow with unfriendly smile ; 

We mourn for them too, for our hearts are warm 
Yet with a drop from the ancestral isle. 

Tell me thy name, American ! What race, 

What blood, what accent ruled thee at thy 
birth? 

That when the news comes of a new disgrace 
Mak'st England's grief the staple of thy mirth. 

II 

But we are past Seraglio Point — behold ! 
Scutari — Pera — cypresses — caiques — 



98 THE TAKING OF SEBASTOPOL 

All the old places — lo ! the Horn of Gold ! 
The Sultan's pride — the glory of the Greeks. 

There as we anchored in Byzantium's wave 
Beneath the walls of Constantine, a cry 

Startled our ears ; but 't was a cry that gave 
Joy to my soul and gladness to mine eye. 

A new gleam breaketh on the dusky night ! 

Gilding Sophia's, like Saint Peter's dome ; 
Good news ! they have it ! God hath sped the 
right ; 

An hundred minarets flash it on the foam ! 

Mount Ida caught the flash and sent it on 
To the isle of Lemnos, like that courier-light 

Which bright with news of Troy's destruction 
shone, 
And thence it sped to Athos' holy height ; 

So on to Argos, on to Syracuse, 

And, by Hesperia, to the bounteous land 

That owes to Gallic hearts its generous juice, 
Crimsoning the white face of the sacred strand ; 

Till to this young half -world, where Hesperus 
Hangs a new signal in the nation's eyes, 



THE TAKING OF SEBASTOPOL 99 

The lightning sped ! and brought the thrill to 
us — 
A thrill of joy ! they have it ! the Allies ! 

For we must joy with England or abjure 
The faith in freedom that our fathers had. 

Dost thou rejoice not? Wouldst thyself endure 
The sway whose downfall does not make thee 
glad? 

Tell me thy name, that I may set it down, 
And say this man — he had a double soul : 

Proud of old England and her past renown, 
He felt no triumph at Sebastopol ! 



DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 



A gloom of sickness, gathering in the East, 
Spreads over England growing to despair : 

Outside the Prince's chamber waits a priest, 
With that last medicine for our clay, a prayer. 

Not now in state, a royal mother knelt, 
Thinking of this day ten dead years ago : 

Last night the staghound wailed ; perchance it felt 
The sense those creatures have of coming woe. 

Then England prayed, but not alone the isle 
Where England's throne is : on far Western 
plains 

Beyond the seas men prayed, and in strange style 
Those dark-eyed Persians in their Hindu fanes. 

Then Alexandra, in her secret soul 
And silent closet, all alone with One 

Who lent her of his own sweet self-control, 
Prayed to the Father, imaged in that Son : 
100 



DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 101 

" Let not the heir of England, O my God ! 
Go to the grave without a story meet 
For such nobility of soul and birth ; 

But in that high path which his father trod. 
Let him walk ever with unswerving feet, 
Until his reign accomplished be on earth. 

Thou who art King of kings and all mankind, 
Who holdest in thy hand the hearts of kings, 
Knowing their purposes and men's desire, 

Be to my prayer thy gracious ear inclined, 
In this December's darkest hour that brings 
Remembrance back of my lord's goodly sire, 

Who went to glory with his crown of grace 
And spotless record in his princely hand, 
And all the kingdom sorrowing at his bier, 

That Thou, who ever didst befriend his race, 
Wilt spare my husband for this weeping land, 
To serve it ever, as thy servant here. 



Oh, Albert Edward ! let the people say, 

In thee we know our Heaven-appointed king, 

Because when all were heart-sick with dismay 
Hope fanned our fever with her constant wing ; 

And when the star of life was hardly seen 
Under one awful shadow in the storm, 



102 DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 

That cloud was broken ! and the blue serene 

Smiled, — and the star burned steadily and warm, 

For England's prayer was heard by Him who made 
England so mighty ! rich and free and strong. 

Oh may that sceptre still be wisely swayed 

Which Heaven hath blest so largely and so long ! 



ST. JAMES'S PARK 

I watched the swans in that proud park 

Which England's Queen looks out upon ; 
I sat there till the dewy dark, — 

And every other soul was gone ; 

And sitting silent, all alone, 
I seemed to hear a spirit say, 

Be calm, the night is, — never moan 
For friendships that have passed away. 

The swans that vanished from thy sight 

Will come to-morrow, at their hour ; 
But when thy joys have taken flight, 

To bring them back no prayer hath power. 

'T is the world's law ; and why deplore 
A doom that from thy birth was fate ? 

True, 't is a bitter word, " No more ! " 
But look beyond this mortal state. 

Believ'st thou in eternal things ? 
Thou feelest in thy inmost heart, 
103 



104 ST. JAMES'S PARK 

Thou art not clay ; thy soul hath wings, 
And what thou seest is but part. 
Make this thy medicine for the smart 

Of every day's distress : be dumb ; 
In each new loss thou truly art 

Tasting the power of things to come. 



VESPERS ON THE SHORE OF THE 
MEDITERRANEAN 

At Savona, a very ancient little city on the coast of Genoa, 
there stands a Madonna by the lighthouse, about twelve feet 
high, under which are inscribed, in letters of a corresponding- 
size, two Sapphic verses, which are both good Latin and choice 
Italian, made by Gabriello Chiabrera, " the prince of Italian 
lyric poets," who was a native of Savona, — 

" In mare irato, in subita procella, 
Invoco te nostra benigna stella." 

Valery, the most agreeable of Italian travelers, — a charming 
and instructive writer, and a pleasant corrective to the sharpness 
of Forsyth, — remarks that this pretty distich shows the genius 
and analogy of the two languages, the latter of which can only be 
well known to those who are conversant with the former. 

These verses of Chiabrera's are actually sung, to this day, as 
the burden of an affecting litany to the Virgin, in daily use among 
the mariners of the Riviera. 

Religion's purest presence was not found, 
By the first followers of our Saviour's creed, 

In stately fanes where trump and timbrel-sound 
Sent up the chorus in a strain agreed, 

And where the decked oblation's wail might plead 

For guilty man with Abraham's holy seed. 

105 



106 VESPERS ON THE SHORE 

Not in vast domes, horizons hung by men, 
Where golden panels fret a marble sky, 

And things below look up, and wonder when 
Those lifelike seraphim would start and fly ! 

Not where the heart is mastered by the eye 

Will worship, anthem- winged, ascend most high. 

But in the damp cathedral of the grove, 
Where Nature feels the sanctitude s of rest, 

Or in the stillness of the sheltered cove, 
Which noiseless water-fowl alone molest, 

At times a reverence will pervade the breast 

Which will not always come, a bidden guest. 

Oft as the parting smiles of day and night 
Flush earth and ocean with a roseate hue, 

And the quick changes of the magic light 
Prolong the glory of their warm adieu, 

Each pilgrim on the hills, and every crew 

On the lulled waters, frame their vows anew. 

Then by the waves that lip Liguria's land, 

In Genoa's gulf, thou, wanderer ! must have 
heard 

What, more than hymns from Pergolesi's hand, 
The living soul of adoration stirred, 



OF THE MEDITERRANEAN 107 

And, like the note of spring's first welcomed bird, 
Some thoughts awoke — for which there is no 
word, — 

The shipman's chant ! as noting travelers tell, 
In either language — old and new — the same ; 

But more they might have truly said, and well, 
For 't is a speech the universe may claim — 

Men of all times, all climes, and every name — 

Devotion's tongue ! which from the Godhead came. 



HYMN 

Tost rudderless around the deep, 
By Apennine and Alpine blast, 

Which o'er the surge in fury sweep, 
And make a bulrush of our mast, 

We murmur in our half -hour's sleep, 
To thee, Madonna ! till the storm be past : 
In mare irato, in subita procella, 
Invoco te nostra benigna stella. 

Whether for weeks our bark hath striven 
With death in wild Sardinia's waves, 

Or downward far as Tunis driven, 

Threat us with life — the life of slaves, 



108 HYMN 

We know whose hand its help has given, 
And locked the lightning in its thunder caves. 
In mare irato, in subita procella, 
Invoco te nostra benigna stella. 

O Virgin ! when the landsman's hymn, 

At vesper time, on bended knee, 
In sunlit aisle, or chapel dim, 

Or cloister cell, is paid to thee, 
Hear us ! that ocean's pavement skim, 
And join our anthem to the raging sea : 

In mare irato, in subita procella, 

Invoco te nostra benigna stella. 

And when the tempest's wrath is o'er, 

And tired Libeccio sinks to rest, 
And starlight falls upon the shore 

Where love sits watching, uncaressed 9 
Though hushed the tumult and the roar, 
Again the prayer we '11 chant which Thou hast 
blest : 
In mare irato, in subita procella, 
Invoco te nostra benigna stella. 



THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD AT GXRGENTX 

Not far from iEtna the Sicilian sun 
Shines on a broken fane whose work is done : 
The columns linger, but the hymn is ended ; 
The smoke of sacrifice, that once ascended, 
Staining the sapphire with an earthlier blue, 
Is vanished with the crowd, from morning's view : 
Music and garlands greet no more the day ; 
Their gods are gone, and ours alone hath sway. 

Such is Time's way with temples : look at thine ! 
Those changing hairs, the daily-deepening line ! 
Mark the slow signs; then in these things of 

stone 
Read Agrigentum's history — and thine own. 

109 



CAMPANILE DI PISA 

Snow was glistening on the mountains, but the 

air was that of June, 
Leaves were falling, but the runnels playing still 

their summer tune, 
And the dial's lazy shadow hovered nigh the brink 

of noon. 
On the benches in the market rows of languid 

idlers lay, 
When to Pisa's nodding belfry, with a friend, I 

took my way. 

From the top we looked around us, and as far as 
eye might strain, 

Saw no sign of life or motion in the town or on 
the plain ; 

Hardly seemed the river moving through the wil- 
lows to the main ; 

Nor was any noise disturbing Pisa from her 
drowsy hour, 

Save the doves that fluttered 'neath us, in and out, 
and round the tower. 
110 



CAMPANILE DI PISA 111 

Not a shout from gladsome children, nor the clat- 
ter of a wheel, 

Nor the spinner of the suburb winding his dis- 
cordant reel, 

Nor the stroke upon the pavement of a hoof or of 
a heel : 

Even the slumberers in the churchyard of the 
Campo Santo seemed 

Scarce more quiet than the living world that 
underneath us dreamed. 

Dozing at the city's portal, heedless guard the 

sentry kept ; 
More than oriental dullness o'er the sunny farms 

had crept ; 
Near the walls the ducal herdsmen by the dusty 

roadside slept ; 
While the camels, resting round him, half alarmed 

the sullen ox, 
Seeing those Arabian monsters pasturing with 

Etruria's flocks. 

Then it was, like one who wandered, lately, singing 

by the Rhine 
Strains perchance to maiden's hearing sweeter than 

this verse of mine, 
That we bade Imagination lift us on her wing 

divine ; 



112 CAMPANILE DI PISA 

And the days of Pisa's greatness rose from the 

sepulchral past, 
When a thousand conquering galleys bore her 

standard at the mast. 

Memory for a moment crowned her sovereign mis- 
tress of the seas, 

When she braved, upon the billows, Venice and 
the Genoese, 

Daring to deride the Pontiff, though he shook his 
angry keys ; 

When her admirals triumphant, riding o'er the 
Soldan's waves, 

Brought from Calvary's holy mountain fitting soil 
for knightly graves. 

When the Saracen surrendered, one by one, his 

pirate isles, 
And Ionia's marble trophies decked Lungarno's 

Gothic piles, 
Where the festal music floated in the light of 

ladies' smiles ; 
Soldiers in the busy court-yard, nobles in the halls 

above — 
Oh ! those days of arms are over — arms and 

courtesy and love ! 



CAMPANILE DI PISA 113 

Now, as on Achilles' buckler, next a peaceful scene 

succeeds ; 
Pious crowds in the cathedral duly tell their blessed 

beads ; 
Students walk the learned cloister, — Ariosto wakes 

the reeds, — 
Science dawns, and Galileo opens to the Italian 

youth, 
As he were a new Columbus, new - discovered 

realms of truth. 

Hark! what murmurs from the million in the 

bustling market rise ! 
All the lanes are loud with voices, all the windows 

dark with eyes ; 
Black with men the marble bridges, heaped the 

shores with merchandise ; 
Turks and Greeks and Libyan merchants in the 

square their councils hold, 
And the Christian altars glitter, gorgeous with 

Byzantine gold ! 

Look! anon the masqueraders don their holiday 

attire ; 
Every palace is illumined, all the town seems 

built of fire ; 



114 CAMPANILE DI PISA 

Rainbow-colored lanterns dangle from the top of 

every spire : 
Pisa's patron saint hath hallowed to himself the 

joyful day ; 
Never on the thronged Eialto showed the Carnival 

more gay. 

Suddenly the bell beneath us broke the vision with 

its chime. 
" Signors," quoth our gray attendant, " it is almost 

vesper time ; " 
Vulgar life resumed its empire, down we dropt 

from the sublime. 
Here and there a friar passed us, as we paced the 

silent streets, 
And a cardinal's rumbling carriage roused the 

sleepers from the seats. 



SORRENTO 

Midway betwixt the present and the past — 
Naples and Paestum — look ! Sorrento lies : 

Ulysses built it, and the Sirens cast 

Their spell upon the shore, the sea, the skies. 

If thou hast dreamed, in any dream of thine, 
How Paradise appears, or those Elysian 

Immortal meadows which the gods assign 
Unto the pure of heart, — behold thy vision ! 

These waters, they are blue beyond belief, 

And England's emerald meads are matched by 
these ; 

The sun — 't is Italy's ; here winter's brief 
And gentle visit hardly chills the breeze. 

Here Tasso dwelt, and here inhaled with spring 
The breath of passion and the soul of song. 

Here young Boccaccio plumed, his early wing, 
Thenceforth to soar above the vulgar throng. 
115 



116 SORRENTO 

All charms of contrast, every nameless grace 
That lives in outline, harmony, or hue, 

So heighten all the romance of the place, 
That the rapt artist maddens at the view, 

And then despairs, and throws his pencil by, 
And sits all day and looks upon the shore 

And the calm ocean with a languid eye, 
As though to labor were a law no more. 

Voluptuous coast ! no wonder that the proud 
Imperial Roman found in yonder isle 

Some sunshine still to gild Fate's gathering cloud 
And lull the storm of conscience for a while. 

What new Tiberius, tired of lust and life, 

May rest him here to give the world a truce, — 

A little truce from perjury and strife, 
Justice adulterate and power's misuse ? 

Might the gross Bourbon — he that sleeps in 
spite 
Of red Vesuvius ever in his eye, 
Yet, if he wake, should tremble at its light, 

As 'twere Heaven's vengeance, promised from 
on high — 



SORRENTO 117 

Might he, or any of Oppression's band, 
Sit here and learn the lesson of the scene, 

Peace might return to many a bleeding land, 
And men grow just again, and life serene. 



HUDSON RIVER 

Rivers that roll most musical in song 
Are often lovely to the mind alone ; 

The wanderer muses, as he moves along 

Their vacant banks, on glories not their own. 

When, to give substance to his boyhood's dreams, 
He leaves his land, far countries to survey, 

Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams, 
"Their names alone are beautiful, not they." 

If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour 
A tide more meagre than his native Charles ; 

Or view the Rhone when summer's heat is o'er, 
Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Aries ; 

Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling 
His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome, 

Oft to his thought must partial memory bring 
More noble waves, without renown, at home ; 

Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold 
The lordly Hudson marching to the main, 
118 



HUDSON RIVER 119 

And say what bard, in any land of old, 
Had such a river to inspire his strain. 

Along the Rhine, gray battlements and towers 
Declare what robbers once the realm possessed ; 

But here Heaven's handiwork surpasseth ours, 
And man has hardly more than built his nest. 

No storied castle overawes these heights, 

Nor antique arches check the current's play, 

No mouldering architrave the mind invites 
To dream of deities long passed away. 

But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form 
Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise 

Above the lightnings of the midway storm, 
While far below the skiff securely plies. 

And these deep woods forever have remained 
Touched by no axe, by no proud owner nursed ; 

As now they look, they looked when Pharaoh 
reigned, 
Lineal descendants of creation's first. 

Thou Scottish Tweed, a sacred streamlet now ! 
Since thy last minstrel laid him down to 
die, 



120 HUDSON RIVER 

Where through the casement of his chamber thou 
Didst mix thy moan with his departing sigh, 

A single stretch of Hudson's ampler hills 
Might furnish forests for the whole of thine, 

Hide in thick shade all Humber's feeding rills, 
And darken all the fountains of the Tyne. 

Imperial Thames ! — could all his riches buy, 
To gild the strand which London loads with 
gold, 

Sunshine so bright, such purity of sky, 
As bless thy sultry season and thy cold ? 

No tales, we know, are chronicled of thee 

In ancient scrolls ; no deeds of doubtful claim 

Have hung a history on every tree, 

And given each rock its fable and a fame. 

But neither here hath any conqueror trod, 
Nor grim invader from barbarian climes ; 

No horrors feigned of giant or of god 

Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes. 

Here never yet have happy fields laid waste, 
The ravished harvest and the blasted fruit, 

The cottage ruined and the shrine defaced, 
Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute. 



HUDSON RIVER 121 

" Yet, O Antiquity ! " the stranger sighs, 

" Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view ; 

The soul's indifference dulls the sated eyes, 
Where all is fair indeed — but all is new." 

False thought! is age to crumbling walls confined? 

To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones ? 
Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind, 

More than old fortresses and sculptured stones ? 

Call not this new which is the only land 

That wears unchanged the same primeval face 

Which, when just dawning from its Maker's hand, 
Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race. 

Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth 

Glide past green Eden towards the unknown 
south, 

Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth, 

And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth. 

Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile ! 

Thebes and the Pyramids to thee are young ; 
Oh ! had thy waters burst from Britain's isle, 

Till now, perchance, they had not flowed unsung. 



THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK 

Combien d'hommes ont regarde* cette ombre en Egypte et a 
Rome ? — Chateaubriand. 

Homeward turning from the music which had 

'wildered so my brain, 
That my way I scarce remembered to the Quirinal 

again, — 
Not unwilling to forget it underneath a moon so fair, 
In a solitude so sacred, and so summer-like an air, — 
By the shore I came, of Tiber, little conscious where 

I stood, 
Till I marked the yellow trembling of the light 

upon the flood. 

Tethered near, some broken barges hid the wave's 

august repose ; 
Petty sheds of humble dealers nigh the Campus 

Martius rose ; 
Hardly could the dingy Thamis, when his tide is 

ebbing low, 
Life's dull scene in colder colors to the homesick 

exile show. 

122 



THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK 123 

Winding from the vulgar prospect, through a laby- 
rinth of lanes, 

Forth I stood upon the Corso, where its greatness 
Rome retains. 

Yet it was not ancient glory, though the midnight 
radiance fell 

Soft on many a princely mansion, many a dome's 
majestic swell ; 

Though, from some hushed corner gushing, oft a 
modern fountain gleamed, 

Where the marble and the waters in their fresh- 
ness equal seemed : 

What though open courts unfolded columns of 
Corinthian mould ? 

Beautiful it was, — but altered ! naught bespake 
the Rome of old. 

So, regardless of the grandeur, passed I towards 
the Northern Gate ; 

All around were shining gardens, — churches glit- 
tering, yet sedate, 

Heavenly bright the broad enclosure ! but the 
overwhelming silence brought 

Stillness to mine own heart's beating, with a mo- 
ment's turn of thought, 



124 THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK 

And it startled me to notice I was walking una- 
ware 

O'er the Obelisk's tall shadow on the pavement of 
the square. 

Ghost-like seemed it to address me, and conveyed 
me for a while 

Backward, through a thousand ages, to the bor- 
ders of the Nile, 

Where the centuries watched its creeping from the 
morn when it begun, 

O'er the stones perchance of Memphis, or the 
City of the Sun. 

Kingly turrets looked upon it, pyramids and sculp- 
tured fanes ; 

Now the sand is king o'er Pharaoh, but the shadow 
still remains. 

Out of Egypt came the trophy, from old empire 

to the new ; 
Here the eternal apparition met the millions' daily 

view. 
Virgil's foot has touched it often ; it hath kissed 

Octavia's face ; 
Royal chariots have rolled o'er it, in the frenzy of 

the race, 



THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK 125 

When the strong, the swift, the valiant, mid the 

thronged arena strove, 
In the days of good Augustus, and the dynasty of 

Jove. 

Herds are feeding in the Forum, as in old 

Evander's time ; 
Tumbled from the steep Tarpeian all the towers 

that sprang sublime. 
Strange ! that what seemed most inconstant should 

the most abiding prove ; 
Strange ! that what is hourly moving no mutation 

can remove ; 
Ruined lies the cirque ! the chariots long ago 

have ceased to roll ; 
Even the Obelisk is broken, — but the shadow still 

is whole. 

What is fame ! if mightiest empire leave so little 

mark behind, 
How much less must heroes hope for, in the wreck 

of humankind ! 
Less than even this darksome picture, which I 

tread beneath my feet, 
Copied by a lifeless moonbeam on the pebbles of 

the street : 



126 THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK 

Read the name upon the base there, — most of all 

Rome's names renowned, 
Csesar ! — what left he behind him, save the 

shadow of a sound ? 



LA PINETA DISTRUTTA 

" La divina f oresta spessa e viva 

Per cui le fronde, tremolando pronte, 

Tutte quante piegavano . . . 
Non pero dal lor esser dritto sparte 

Tanto, che gli augelletti per le cime 

Lasciasser d' operare ogni lor arte : 
Ma con piena letizia 1' ore prime, 

Cantando, ricevieno intra le foglie, 

Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime ; 
Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie 

Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi 

Quand' Eolo Scirrocco fuor discioglie." 

Purgatorio, Canto xxviii. 



Farewell, Ravenna's forest ! and farewell 
For aye through coming centuries to the sound, 

Over blue Adria, of the lyric pines, 
And Chiassi's bird-song keeping burden sweet 

To their low moan as once to Dante's lines, 
Which when my step first felt Italian ground 

I strove to follow, carried by the spell 
Of that sad Florentine whose very street 

127 



128 LA PINE T A DISTRUTTA 

(At morn and midnight) where he used to dwell 
My father bade me pace with reverent feet. 

Some rapid spirit, misapprehending this, 
Will say, " Perchance our imbecile prefers 

Pine woods to railways." What! the living 
trees 
To the dead sleepers of the vulgar track ? 

Yes ; if men find in business all their bliss, 
And if our Harvard Academe so errs 

In counting Cicero something more than cheese 
And Virgil's "Gallus " better than the clack 

Of Brockton boot-shops and the lasts of Lynn, 
Then let men cease a little from their brag 

Of "recti cidtus roborant" Go spin 
The sooner to destruction with spread flag, — 
Pools' commonwealth ! — and trot thyself to death 

With speed, and speed, but never once God-speed ! 
Because our age, like Judas, bears the bag, 
And every scholar needs must bate his breath 

If any black-thumbed boor waxed rich precede. 
Plutus hath made God's image a machine 

For minting dollars ; and the nobler art, 
Dante's, Boccaccio's, Dryden's, Byron's, mine, 

Seems for its value in the public mart 
Less than the song was of Ravenna's pine. 



LETTER FROM AMERICA TO A FRIEND 
IN TUSCANY 

On the rough Bracco's top, at break of day, 
High o'er that gulf which bounds the Genoese, 

Since thou and I pursued our mountain way, 
Twenty Decembers have disrobed the trees. 

Charmed by the glowing earth and golden sky, 
In Arno's vale you made yourself a nest ; 

There perched in peace and bookish ease, while I, 
In love with Freedom, sought her in the West. 

And here, amid remembrances that throng 
Thicker than blossoms in the new-born June, 

Thine chiefly claims the token of a song 

That still, at least, my heart remains in tune. 

But who can sing amid this roar of streets, 
This crash of engines and discordant mills, 

Where even in Solitude's most lone retreats 
Some factory drowns the music of the rills ? 



129 



130 LETTER FROM AMERICA 

True, Nature here hath donned her gala robe, 
Rich in all charms, — bland, savage, and sub- 
lime, — 

Within one realm enfolding half the globe, 
Flowers of all soils, and fruits of every clime. 

But yet no bard, with consecrating touch, 
Hath made the scene a nobler mood inspire ; 

The sullen Puritan, the sensual Dutch, 

Proved but a barren fosterage for the lyre. 

Here by the ploughman, as with daily tread 
He tracks the furrows of his virgin ground, 

Dark locks of hair, and thigh-bones of the dead, 
Spear-heads, and skulls, and arrow-heads are 
found. 

On such memorials unconcerned we gaze ; 

No trace returning of the glow divine 
Wherewith, dear Walter ! in our Eton days 

We eyed a fragment from the Palatine. 

Cellini's workmanship could nothing add, 
Nor the Pope's blessing, nor a case of gold, 

To the strange value every pebble had 

O'er which perhaps the Tiber's wave had rolled. 



TO A FRIEND IN TUSCANY 131 

A like enchantment all thy land pervades, 

Mellows the sunshine, softens autumn's breeze, 

O'erhangs the mouldering town, and chestnut 
shades, 
And glows and sparkles in her storied seas. 

No such a spell the charmed adventurer guides 
Who seeks those ruins hid in Yucatan, 

Where through the tropic forest, silent glides, 
By crumbled fane and idol, slow Copan. 

There, as the weedy pyramid he climbs, 

Or views, mid groves that rankly wave above, 

The work of nameless hands in unknown times, 
Much wakes his wonder — nothing stirs his 
love. 

Art's rude beginnings, wheresoever found, 

The same didl chord of feeling faintly strike ; 

The Druid's pillar, and the Indian mound, 
And Uxmal's monuments, are mute alike. 

And here, although the gorgeous year hath brought 

Crimson October's beautiful decay, 
Seldom this loveliness inspires a thought 

Beyond the marvels of the fleeting day. 



132 LETTER FROM AMERICA 

For here the Present overpowers the Past ; 

No recollections to these woods belong, 
O'er which no minstrelsy its veil hath cast, 

To rouse our worship, or supply my song. 

But these will come ; the necromancer Age 
Shall round the wilderness his glory throw ; 

Hudson shall murmur through the poet's page, 
And in his numbers more superbly flow. 

Enough ! — 't is more than midnight by the clock ; 

Manhattan dreams of dollars, all abed : 
With you, dear Walter, 't is the crow of cock, 

And o'er Fiesole the skies are red. 

Good-night ! yet stay — both longitudes to suit, 
Your own returning, and my absent light, 

Thus let me bid our mutual salute ; 

To you baon-giorno — for myself good-night ! 



ROSLIN CHAPEL 

Thy beauty, Roslin, woke a loftier thought — 
Those friars are gone, but not the truths they 

taught ; 
The mind that planned thee, and the monks that 

reared, 
Censers, bells, candles — all have disappeared : 
But the same spirit hovers round thy walls 
That hallows Westminster, pervades St. Paul's, 
Or makes the pile that sanctifies the Ouse 
A place of pilgrimage for my small muse. 

When Scotland's poet led his poet-guest 
To thee from Hawthornden's romantic nest, 
Thou wast a w^reck, and Johnson's learned eye 
Read in thy stones but barbarism gone by. 
Now from a thousand leagues beyond the sea 
Men come to wonder at and study thee, 
And maids of English tongue but foreign birth 
Kneel on thy flags and kiss thy sacred earth. 

And when thy second ruin shall come round 
And not one stone be on another found, 

133 



134 ROSLIN CHAPEL 

The faith which hung those arches and restored, 
Shall still raise temples to the living Lord. 
The creed of immortality is thine, 
Whose life depends not on one mouldering shrine. 
Your gods, ye Greeks, died long before your fanes : 
Churches may crumble, but Christ's word remains. 



BY THE SUDBURY 

Hardly who bends o'er Wayland bridge 
Can tell which side the current flows ; 

In vain you mark the swaying sedge — 
This way and that each eddy goes. 

I drop a leaflet on the wave — 

A crimson page from autumn's book — 
Did ever thing so misbehave ? 

For less it moves as more I look ! 

They say the Sudbury seeks the sea, 
But ocean to the eastward lies ; 

This dallying streamlet seems to be 

Bound for the spring whence it had rise, 

And lingers as it loved the meads 
And mossy rocks where cattle stray 

More than those dank, salt-smelling weeds 
And breakers of the distant bay ; 

The lilied banks, the frequent gifts 
Of apple blossoms drifting down, 
135 



136 BY THE SUDBURY 

More than yon cold and gravelly clif ts, 
Where vessels wreck and seamen drown 



And shuns to leave the sunny slope 
Where maples, nodding o'er the brook, 

Their branches to the oriole ope 

And yield the summer thrush a nook. 

Is it not so with us ? We dread 
In the great sea of love to lose 

Our individual being, dead 
To present images, and choose 

A life uncertain, full of pain, 

Rather than on that unknown, dark 9 

Awful, unfathomable main 

Put forth in such a fragile bark, 

Dismantled of all tender ties 

That make us feel content, secure, 

And through life's aches and agonies 
Bestow the courage to endure. 

But One is watching o'er the deep, 
As on the rivulet. We know 

He giveth his beloved sleep — 
A slumber that is end of woe. 



INSCRIPTION FOR A DRINKING FOUNTAIN 
AT WAYLAND 

You that from cups of gay champagne 

Or coffee come, to take a turn 
Across our pleasant Sudbury plain 

To where the Wayside fagots burn, 

Here let your lordly palfreys drink, 
Here give thy panting steed a rest, 

That on your pillow ye may think, 

" I have remembered Heaven's behest : 

" ' Do unto others what ye would 

Another one should unto you,' ' 
And let thy charity include 

Thy neighbor and his horses, too. 
137 



MARTIAL ODE 

WRITTEN FOR THE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE 
ARTILLERY COMPANY 

— " maims hsee inimica tyrannis, 
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem." 

Algernon Sidney. 

Ancient of days ! Thy prophets old 
Declared Thee also Lord of war ; 

And sacred chroniclers have told 

Of kings whom Thou didst battle for. 

Ancient and honorable men 

Have always kept the sword in sight, 
Against a day when purchased pen 

Or venal voices poison right. 

If kings oppress or disobey 

Their people's will, the axe must fall ; 
Or should a people madly stray 

From judgment in their council-hall, 



138 



MARTIAL ODE 139 

Till wisdom, wavering, yields at length, 

And love is lost on either side, 
Thy dread arbitrament, O Strength ! 

Every strong nation must abide. 

When Heaven's artillery shakes the skies 
Death and wild ruin follow fast, 

That purer elements may rise 
Soon as the storm is overpast ; 

When armies by Potomac's flood 

Menaced the fabric of the free, 
Our eagle's young ones sucked up blood, 

And where the slain are there was She. 

Now London sends her loyal sons 

To grace our gathering : clarion ! fife ! 

Sound England welcome ! drums and guns ! 
Ring notes of gladness — not of strife. 

That placid quiet all men seek, 

Long may it crown a land restored ! 

But Massachusetts ! be not weak, 
If wronged, to seek it with a sword. 



GUY FAWKES DAY 

AT THE OLD HOUSE IN SUDBURY 

One fifth of November, when meadows were 

brown, 
And the crimson woods withered round Sudbury 

town, 
Four lads from that city which Holmes calls the 

best, 
At an old tavern met for a whole day of rest. 

There was Henry and Austin and William and 

John, 
And the glasses went round as the oak-wood went 

on, 
And the spirit was kindly, the water was hot. 
Why, then, should Guy Fawkes and his day be 

forgot ? 

He was known in this tavern of old, I expect^ 
Though his name, like the turnpike, has come to 
neglect ; 

140 



GUY FAWKES DAY 141 

And I guess there was loyalty under this roof — 
See ! Her Majesty's picture remains for a proof. 

But distinction is lost, — the Queen 's nobody now, 
And a sovereign is not worth a sixpence to Howe, 
Though his fathers before him, the constant old 

carles, 
By the name of their monarch did christen the 

Charles. 

There be names on the window-panes written with 

rings, 
When the gentles wore diamonds and all was the 

king's ; 
When Joel and Hiram, as still they should do, 
Served the punch, my dear Henry, to persons like 

you. 

But the scutcheon is faded that hangs on the wall, 
And the hearth looks forlorn in the desolate hall ; 
And the floor that has bent with the minuet's tread, 
It is like a church pavement, — the dancers are 
dead. 

Yet we summoned them back, and recalled ancient 

times, 
And we roused the old Papist, repeating his rhymes, 



142 GUY FAWKES DAY 

And, to help on the humor, each man, with his 

drink, 
Gave the best match for Guido of whom he could 

think. 

Well, we thought of all scandalous names that 

had been, 
Cain, Catiline, Borgia, — the bywords of sin, — 
Saint Dominic Guzman, Marat, Machiavel, — 
Though the splendor of that one we recognized 

well. 

Then Austin propounded — a health to old Nol ! 

And those Roundheaded rogues whom our speak- 
ers extol ; 

And one mentioned Arnold, and one Aaron Burr, 

And that Empress was named in the country of 
fur. 

But we tired of such folk, so, to sweeten our toast 
Gave that noblest of bards Massachusetts can 

boast ! 
Famous now is this house, in whose halls he hath 

been, 
For his muse hath made sacred old Sudbury Inn ! 



THE OLD HOUSE IN SUDBURY TWENTY 
YEARS AFTERWARDS 

" Our revels now are ended." — Tempest. 

Thunder-clouds may roll above him, 
And the bolt may rend his oak : 

Lyman lieth where no longer 

He shall dread the lightning stroke. 

Never to his father's hostel 

Comes a kinsman or a guest ; 
Midnight calls for no more candles : 

House and landlord both have resto 

Adam's love and Adam's trouble 
Are a scarce-remembered tale ; 

No more wine-caps brightly bubble ; 
No more healths, nor cakes, nor ale. 

On the broken hearth a dotard 
Sits, and fancies foolish things ; 
143 



144 THE OLD HOUSE IN SUDBURY 

And the poet weaves romances, 
Which the maiden fondly sings, 

All about the ancient hostel 
With its legends and its oaks, 

And the quaint old-bachelor brothers, 
And their minstrelsy and jokes. 

No man knows them any longer : 
All are gone, and I remain 

Reading, as it were, mine epitaph 
On the rainbow-colored pane. 

Blessings on them, dear initials ! 

Henry W., Daniel T., 
E. and L. : — I '11 not interpret ; 

Let men wonder who they be. 

Some are in their graves, and many 
Buried in their books and cares ; 

In the tropics, in Archangel : 

Our thoughts are no longer theirs. 

God have mercy ! all are sinful ; 

Christ, conform our lives to thine ! 
Keep us from all strife, ill-speaking, 

Envy, and the curse of wine. 



THE OLD HOUSE IN SUDBURY 145 

Fetch my steed ! I cannot linger. 

Buckley, quick ! I must away. 
Good old groom, take thou this nothing ; 

Millions could not make me stay. 



MY SUDBURY MISTLETOE 

LONDON, CHRISTMAS DAY, MDCCCLXXI 

This hallowed stem the Druids once adored, 
And now I wreathe it round my bleeding Lord ; 
So might my spirit around his image twine, 
And find support, as in its oak a vine ! 

" I am the Vine," He said ; Lord, then let me 
Be just a tendril clinging to the tree 
Where the Jews nailed Thee bodily, to grow 
Fruit for all fainting souls that grope below. 

May this green hope that in my heart is born 
Blossom before another Christmas morn ! 
Then my weird mistletoe I '11 cast away, 
And hang up lilies to record the day. 

146 



THE WILLEY HOUSE 

A BALLAD OF THE WHITE HILLS 



Come, children, put your baskets down, 
And let the blushing berries be ; 

Sit here and wreathe a laurel crown, 
And if I win it, give it me. 

'T is afternoon — it is July — 

The mountain shadows grow and grow : 
Your time of rest, and mine is nigh — 

The moon was rising long ago. 

While yet on old Chocorua's top 

The lingering sunlight says farewell, 

Your purple-fingered labor stop, 
And hear a tale I have to tell. 

II 

You see that cottage in the glen, 
Yon desolate, forsaken shed, 
147 



148 THE WILLEY HOUSE 

Whose mouldering threshold, now and then, 
Only a few stray travelers tread. 

No smoke is curling from its roof, 
At eve no cattle gather round, 

No neighbor now, with dint of hoof, 
Prints his glad visit on the ground. 

A happy home it was of yore : 

At morn the flocks went nibbling by, 

And Farmer Willey, at his door, 

Oft made their reckoning with his eye. 

Where yon rank alder-trees have sprung, 
And birches cluster, thick and tall, 

Once the stout apple overhung, 

With his red gifts, the orchard wall. 

Right fond and pleasant in their ways 
The gentle Willey people were ; 

I knew them in those peaceful days, 
And Mary — every one knew her. 

in 

Two summers now had seared the hills, 
Two years of little rain or dew ; 

High up the courses of the rills 

The wild-rose and the raspberry grew : 



THE WILLEY HOUSE 149 

The mountain sides were cracked and dry, 
And frequent fissures on the plain, 

Like mouths, gaped open to the sky, 

As though the parched earth prayed for rain. 

One sultry August afternoon, 

Old Willey, looking toward the west, 

Said, " We shall hear the thunder soon : 
Oh ! if it bring us rain, 't is blest." 

And even with his word, a smell 

Of sprinkled fields passed through the air, 

And from a single cloud there fell 

A few large drops — the rain was there. 

Ere set of sun a thunder-stroke 
Gave signal to the floods to rise ; 

Then the great seal of heaven was broke, 
Then burst the gates that barred the skies ! 

While from the west the clouds rolled on, 
And from the nor'west gathered fast, 
" We '11 have enough of rain anon," 
Said Willey, " if this deluge last." 

For all these cliffs that stand -sublime 
Around, like solemn priests appeared, 



150 THE WILLEY HOUSE 

Gray Druids of the olden time, 

Each with his white and streaming beard, 

Till in one sheet of seething foam 

The mingled torrents joined their might ; 

But in the Willeys' quiet home 

Was naught but silence and " Good-night ! 

For soon they went to their repose, 
And in their beds, all safe and warm, 

Saw not how fast the waters rose, 
Heard not the growing of the storm. 

But just before the stroke of ten, 
Old Willey looked into the night, 

And called upon his two hired men, 
And woke his wife, who struck a light, 

Though her hand trembled, as she heard 
The horses whinnying in the stall, 

And — " Children ! " was the only word 
That woman from her lips let fall. 

" Mother ! " the frightened infants cried, 
" What is it ? has a whirlwind come ? " 
Wildly the weeping mother eyed 
Each little darling, but was dumb. 



THE WILLEY HOUSE 151 

A sound ! as though a mighty gale 
Some forest from its hold had riven, 

Mixed with a rattling noise like hail ! 

God ! art Thou raining rocks from heaven ? 

A flash ! O Christ ! the lightning showed 
The mountain moving from his seat ! 

Out ! out into the slippery road ! 
Into the wet with naked feet ! 

No time for dress, — for life ! for life ! 

No time for any word but this. 
The father grasped his boys, his wife 

Snatched her young babe, — but not to kiss. 

And Mary with the younger girl, 

Barefoot and shivering in their smocks, 

Sped forth amid that angry whirl 

Of rushing" waves and whelming: rocks. 



*& 



For down the mountain's crumbling side, 
Full half the mountain from on high 

Came sinking, like the snows that slide 
From the great Alps about July. 

And with it went the lordly ash, 
And with it went the kingly pine ; 



152 THE WILLEY HOUSE 

Cedar and oak, amid the crash, 

Dropped down like clippings of the vine. 

Two rivers rushed, — the one that broke 
His wonted bounds and drowned the land, 

And one that streamed with dust and smoke, 
A flood of earth, of stones and sand. 

Then for a time the vale was dry, 
The soil had swallowed up the wave ; 

Till one star, looking from the sky, 
A signal to the tempest gave : 

The clouds withdrew, the storm was o'er, 
Bright Aldebaran burned again ; 

The buried river rose once more, 

And foamed along his gravelly glen. 

IV 

At noon the men of Conway felt 

Some dreadful thing had chanced that night, 
And those by Breton woods who dwelt 

Observed the mountain's altered height. 

Old Crawford and the Fabyan lad 
Came down from Ammonoosuc then, 

And passed the Notch, — ah ! strange and sad 
It was to see the ravaged glen. 



THE WILLEY HOUSE 153 

But having toiled for miles, in doubt, 
With many a risk of limb and neck, 

They saw, and hailed with joyful shout 
The Willey House amid the wreck. 

That avalanche of stones and sand, 

Remembering mercy in its wrath, 
Had parted, and on either hand 

Pursued the ruin of its path. 

And there upon its pleasant slope, 

The cottage, like a sunny isle 
That wakes the shipwrecked seaman's hope, 

Amid that horror seemed to smile. 

And still upon the lawn before, 

The peaceful sheep were nibbling nigh ; 

But Farmer Willey at his door 

Stood not to count them with his eye. 

And in the dwelling — O despair ! 

The silent room ! the vacant bed ! 
The children's little shoes were there — 

But whither were the children fled ? 

That day a woman's head, all. gashed, 
Its long hair streaming in the flow, 



154 THE WILLEY HOUSE 

Went o'er the dam, and then was dashed 
Among the whirlpools down below. 

And farther down, by Saco side, 

They found the mangled forms of four, 

Held in an eddy of the tide ; 

But Mary, she was seen no more. 

Yet never to this mournful vale 
Shall any maid, in Summer time, 

Come without thinking of the tale 
I now have told you in my rhyme. 

And when the Willey House is gone. 
And its last rafter is decayed, 

Its history may yet live on 

In this your ballad that I made. 



THE ROSE AND THE ORIOLE 

A FABLE WITHOUT A MORAL 

Rose of Damascus ! rose of all ! 
Queen of the roses of the world ! 

The only flower that ere his fall 
Adam thought fit to pluck for Eve, 
As once she lay in slumber curled, 

And he, though half afraid to speak, 
Said, " Lovely being, by your leave, 

Your husband gives you this — and this : " 

Then laid a rose upon her cheek, 

A damask rose, and kiss. 

The rose before was not so red : 
But Eve awoke, and such a blush, 

With her smile mingling, overspread 
Her face that instantly the flower 
Felt through its veins new coloring rush, 

Till every petal showed the stain ! 
And so in the most radiant hour 

Of midsummer's resplendent morn, 
155 



156 THE ROSE AND THE ORIOLE 

The queen of all the rosy train, 
The damask rose, was born ! 



Soon as this woman, flower in hand, 
Led Adam where the strawberries grew, 

An oriole from a palm that fanned 
These earliest lovers, on the rose 
Lighted ; and straight his natural hue 

Of gold, that red to orange turned ! 
Then the sly bird his moment chose, 

Snatched the rose from her hand, and fled 

Far as an amethyst cloud that burned 

In the bright blue o'erliead. 

Now when thou watchest in the west 
The splendors of the dying day, 

Think of the damask rose that prest 
Her cheek whom we our Mother call, 
As dreaming in her bower she lay. 

Remember, too, the oriole's theft, — 
First theft that was, ere Adam's fall, — 
And in the crimson clouds behold, 

Unless thy heart all faith have left, 
His orange and his gold. 



SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY 

This day was sacred, once, to Pan, 
And kept with song and wine ; 

But when our better creed began 
'T was held no more divine, 

Until there came a holy man, 
One Bishop Valentine. 

He, finding, as all good men will, 

Much in the ancient way 
That was not altogether ill, 

Restored the genial day, 
And we the pagan fashion still 

With pious hearts obey. 

Without this custom, all would go 

Amiss in Love's affairs ; 
All passion would be poor dumb show, 

Pent sighs, and secret prayers ; 
And bashful maids would never know 

What timid swain was theirs. 
157 



158 SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY 

Ah ! many things with mickle pains 
Without reward are done ; 

A thousand poets rack their brains 
For her who loves but one ; 

Yea, many weary with their strains 
The nymph that cares for none. 

Yet, should no faithful heart be faint 
To give affection's sign ; 

So, dearest, let mine own acquaint 
With its emotions — thine ; 

And blessings on that fine old saint, 
Good Bishop Valentine ! 



HEALTH AND WEALTH AND LOVE AND 
LEISURE, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR, TO 
MY SWEET LAD YE 

In the fair blank that now, like some new bay 
In life's vague ocean, opens with to-day, 
Couldst thou but write, dear lady, at thy will, 
All thou wouldst choose of good, or shun of ill. 
As on this paper thou mayst fill the space 
With thoughts and wishes gentle as thy face, 
Thou couldst not crowd the days that are to be 
With happier fortune than I hope for thee. 

For, if the saint that keeps the book above 
Which holds the record of thy life and love, 
Where at one view thy childhood and thine age, 
Thy past and future, gleam upon the page, 
Should trust his volume to my hand, and say, 
Write for Augusta all you ask or pray, 
All that twelve moons may bring of peace and bliss, 
Then would I register some fate like this : 

Health, first of all, that every morn may find 
The same bright casket for the same clear mind, 

159 



160 HEALTH AND WEALTH 

And every night bring such repose, that care 
May find no triumph in one altered hair. 

Affection then, the same thou still hast known, 
Such as would shudder at a careless tone, 
And count it selfishness to have a grief 
That in thy sharing did not seek relief. 

Next golden leisure, to enjoy the sun, 
With one to worship, and but only one ; 
With him to tread the solitude, and then 
No less securely try the ways of men ; 
To move in crowds, yet keep the calm within, 
Still amid noise, and spotless amid sin. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PEACOCK 

The peacock sits perched on the roof all night, 
And wakes up the farmhouse before 't is light ; 
But his matins they suit not the delicate ear 
Of the drowsy damsels, that half in fear 
And half in disgust his discord hear. 

If the soul's migration from frame to frame 
Be truth, tell me now whence the peacock's came ? 
Say if it had birth at the musical close 
Of a dying hyena, — or if it arose 
From a Puritan scold that sang psalms through 
her nose ? 

Well : a jackass there was — but you need not look 
For this fable of mine in old iEsop's book — 
That one complaint all his life had whined, 
How Nature had been either blind or unkind 
To give him an aspect so unrefined. 

" 'T is cruel," he groaned, " that I cannot escape 
From the vile prison-house of this horrible shape : 
So gentle a temper as mine to shut in 

161 



162 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PEACOCK 

This figure uncouth and so shaggy a skin, 
And then these long ears ! — it 's a shame and a 
sin." 

Good-natured Jove his upbraidings heard, 
And changed the vain quadruped into a bird, 
And garnished his plumage with many a spot 
Of ineffable hue, such as earth wears not, — 
For he dipped him into the rainbow-pot. 

So dainty he looked in his gold and green, 
That the monarch presented the bird to his queen, 
Who, taken with colors, — as most ladies are, — 
Had him harnessed straight in her crystal car 
Wherein she travels from star to star. 

But soon as his thanks the poor dissonant thing 

Began to bray when he strove to sing, 

" Poor creature ! " quoth Jove, " spite of all my 

pains 
Your spirit shines out in your donkey strains ! 
Though plumed bright as Iris, the ass remains." 

So you see, love, that goodness is better than grace ; 
For the proverb fails in the peacock's case, 
Which says that fine feathers make fine birds too : 
This other old adage is far more true, — 
They only are handsome that handsomely do. 



TO A LADY 

WITH A HEAD OF POPE PIUS NINTH 

My gift went freighted with a hope, — 

Slight bark upon a doubtful sea ! 
Yet, under convoy of the Pope, 
Successful may the venture be ; 
For thus good Pius whispered me, 
"Mifili, Benedicite!" 

His blessing now I will transfer 

To thee, although I hardly know 
What Latin form appropriate were. 
" Cor meum ! " — shall I call thee so ? 
No, let the learned language be 
But, sweetheart, Benedicite ! 

Your cardinals are blooming yet, 

Pride of the brook ! the meadow's gem ! 
So, ere his sun be wholly set, 
I send, in due return for them, 

The Pope — hark, love, he says to thee, 
" My daughter, Benedicite ! " 
163 



164 TO A LADY 

Oh, take his blessing, then, — for ne'er 

Did evil come from holy touch ; 
A righteous man's effectual prayer, 
As the Saint says, availeth much ; 
So, for this once, a Papist be, 
Nor scorn his Benedicite ! 



TO A LADY 

IX RETURN FOR A BOOK OF MICHEL AXGELO'S SOXXETS 

" Xon ha T ottimo artista alcun concetto 
Cli' un solo marmo in se non circoseriva 
Col suo soverchio, — e solo a quelle arriva, 
La man' che oVbedisce all' intelletto." 

Sonnetto di Michel Angelo Buonarroti. 

No master artist e'er imagines aught 
That lies not hid, awaiting mortal gaze, 

In the rough marble, — if but fitly wrought 
By one whose hand his intellect obeys : 

His magic touch the stone's white silence wakes, 

And, lo ! the god from his long bondage breaks : 

Breaks like the blue morn from an orient yapor, 
Which made the pilgrim doubtf id of the day ; 

Or like the music from the written paper 
O'er which some poet lets his fancy play ; 

Like new-born April from the winter's tomb, 

Or any joy that springs from any gloom. 

Lady ! the fair material of our being 
Is put before us, to be carved at will : 
165 



166 TO A LADY 

Oh ! wisely work, with clear conception seeing 

The perfect shape that shall reward thy skill : 
Something there may be, cut from every life, 
Something to worship — whether saint or wife. 

Learn Patience first ; for Patience is the part 
Of all whom Time records among the great, 

The only gift I know, the only art, 

To strengthen up our frailties to our fate : 

Through long endurance comes the martyr crown 

That makes the hero blush for his renown. 

And, as by many steps, from thorn to flower, 
The patient petals of the rose recover 

The hues and fragrance of the golden hour, 
That saw last summer's nightingale her lover, 

So may thy soul, if constancy be thine, 

Toil on through trials till it dawn divine ! 



TO A HUNGARIAN LADY — HOMEWARD 
BOUND 

O Dorothea ! those Hungarian hills 
That bred thy beauty seem so clear to me 

That often such a passionate longing thrills 

My soul to see that country, I could weep 
To think how loves are sundered by the sea ! 

That age must evermore the fireside keep ! 

Ulysses could not : strength was giv'n to him 
Of mind and body. Were I such as he — 

As resolute of heart, as lithe of limb — 
I too would start as pilgrim — oh, how soon ! 

To see the land whose brooks the Danube swell, 

Soon as that river leaves Germania's rim, 

By Buda's bridge, by boats and citadel, 
To seek the Euxine under the new moon 

That rules Byzantium still, though not for aye ; 
But since I never may behold that realm, 

Nor tread in June the vineyards of Tokai, 
I will not let that sorrow overwhelm 

My spirit wholly, but will count it grace, 
If I may never breathe Carpathian air, 

To think of Hungary, looking, on a face 
And one slight figure that was moulded there. 

167 



ALLE SORELLE 

You nymphs that blossom in the shade, 
If every flower that drinks the dew 

The symbol be of some fair maid, 
To what shall I resemble you ? 

Since not a fragrance nor a bloom, 
That makes the glory of your fields, 

But in its freshness or perfume 

Some likeness to your beauty yields. 

One to a chaste magnolia's flower, 
Sole bud upon the virgin tree, 

I might compare ; but scarce the power 
To tell you why belongs to me, 

Save that her sunny presence wears 
The radiant aspect of the South ; 

Long Summer days and Southern airs 
Shine in her eyes, play round her mouth. 

But you, to one another vowed, 
Who lead the sacred life, apart 

168 



ALLE SORELLE 169 

From the vain clamor of the crowd, 
From the wild tumult of the heart, 

In your own groves your emblems grow, 
Walled round with silence everywhere, 

And lifted from the world below 
To healthier soil and purer air. 

For thou, of eye and soul serene, 
Seem'st, lady whom I most adore ! 

A mountain laurel, ever green, 

Sprinkling the hills with Springtime o'er ; 

No matter whether Summer's drought 
A look of withering Winter bring, 

Or if December's blast be out, 

Where thou art dwelling, — it is spring. 

Thy sister is that modest, pale, 

And sweetest nursling of the wood, 

That men call lily of the vale 

Because it dwells in lowly mood : 

Under the laurel shade it grows, 

Nestling itself so close thereby 
That, when their blossoms fall, the snows 

Of both together mingled lie : 



170 ALLE SORELLE 

And both in beauty seem so even, 
That now I worship one, and now 

Find in the other half my heaven : — 
Guess, O my dearest, which art thou ? 



TO JOSEPHINE 

WITH IVY LEAVES 

This ivy that hung on the garden-wall, 
In sunlight, in moonlight, in rain, in dew, 

Shall glisten to-night in the festive hall, 

And gather fresh beauty and grace from you. 

Like a pearl-drop plucked from the deep, to gleam 
On the ivory throne of a lady's wrist, 

To-night shall its loveliness lovelier seem 

On the head by whose tresses it shall be kissed. 
171 



LILY OF STRATH-FARRAR 

My lady comes of knightly race ; 

Her forbears oft on many a field, 
Ere arms to merchandise gave place, 

With life's best drops their honor sealed. 

She beareth lilies on her shield, 
The flower de luce is her device ; 

And on the roll of her degree 
Crosses are blazoned twice and thrice. 

Some served their king on foreign strands ; 

One yeoman fell to make us free ; 
One, at his country's high commands, 

Helped build the country that you see : 

What wonder that his child to me 
Seems of that life a precious part, 

Or that I render her in rhyme 
The constant service of my heart? 

I know mine age forbids to me 
More than a distant lover's doom ; 

To worship still and dream that she 
Some day may wander to my tomb, 
172 



LIL Y OF STRA TH-FARRAR 173 

And haply hang a clover-bloom 

Upon my marble cross, in sign 
That she remembers me with love, 

Though always cold and never mine ! 



OBITUARY 

Finding Francesca full of tears, I said, 

" Tell me thy trouble." " Oh, my dog is dead ! 

Murdered by poison ! — no one knows for what — 

Was ever dog born capable of that ? " 

"Child," — I began to say, but checked my 

thought, — 
" A better dog can easily be bought." 
For no — what animal could him replace ? 
Those loving eyes ! That fond, confiding face ! 
Those dear, dumb touches ! Therefore I was 

dumb. 
From word of mine could any comfort come ? 
A bitter sorrow 't is to lose a brute 
Friend, dog or horse, for grief must then be mute, — 
So many smile to see the rivers shed 
Of tears for one poor, speechless creature dead. 
When parents die there 's many a word to say — 
Kind words, consoling — one can always pray ; 
When children die 't is natural to tell 
Their mother, " Certainly, with them 't is well ! " 
But for a dog, 't was all the life he had, 

174 



OBITUARY 175 

Since death is end of dogs, or good or bad. 
This was his world ; he was contented here ; 
Imagined nothing better, naught more dear, 
Than his young mistress ; sought no brighter 

sphere ; 
Having no sin, asked not to be forgiven ; 
Ne'er guessed at God nor ever dreamed of heaven. 
Now he has passed away, so much of love 
Goes from our life, without one hope above ! 
When a dog dies there 's nothing to be said 
But — kiss me, darling ! — dear old Smiler 's dead. 



IN RETURN FOR SOME PRAIRIE BIRDS 

'T is a pretty fair farm, that of ours in the West ; 
And the poultry they raise there, it equals the best ; 
These hens of the prairie, I never have seen 
A civilized capon more plump or as clean. 

'T is a fine hunting-ground, the domain we possess, 
Some thousand miles off, — sure it cannot be less ; 
For it took 'em three days, in the mire and the snow, 
These birds to bring hither, — the rivers were low. 

I have walked over England, and given a look 
At all their great houses ; but ne'er was a duke, 
For all his French pedigree, all his fair crest, 
That had such a park as our park in the West. 

Gray bird of the wilderness ! lucky for you 

That you 'scaped the fell shaft of the wandering 

Sioux ! 
Then the savage had gorged you, half burnt and 

half raw, 
And tossed your sweet bones a bonne bouche to 

his squaw. 

176 



IN RETURN FOR SOME PRAIRIE BIRDS 177 

But now you shall grace an Athenian board, 
And sparkling libations to you shall be poured ; 
If Iowa send game and Ohio send wine, 
And Cambridge good company,— may we not 
dine? 

What have they at Windsor we cannot have here ? 
If we 've no royal names, yet we '11 have royal cheer : 
This only is wanting, — that he were my guest 
Whose friendship supplies me with birds from the 
West. 



TO MADDALENA 

Le chiome a V aura sparse, e lei conserva 
Indietro veggio ; e cosa bella riede 
Nel cor come colei che tien la ehiave. 

Petrarca, Son. XCIII. 

Many in shades like these find loneliness 

A kind of terror : I am ne'er alone, 
With Nature smiling in her summer dress, 

And with one lady of such gentle tone 
As Maddalena's, whose companionship, 

Casual or constant, is enough to make 
The world seem richer for what things I skip 

Who skip so much of life for study's sake. 
178 



CANDLEMAS NIGHT 

While still the west was glowing, yesternight, 

From a small dwelling in a common street, 
Amid all common things of sound and sight, 

A mighty spirit Olympus-ward did fleet. 
In that celestial commonwealth of souls 

Who have deserved Olympus, what a crowd 
Will come about him ! how the list unrolls 

Of names like his ! with voice no longer loud, 
But low and tender, trembling to the tone 

Of his melodious greeting, " O my true ! 
O Charles ! dear Edmund ! constant Garrison ! 

Sweet singer by the Charles ! when friends were 
few. " 

Haply some elder champions, from afar, 

Noting such press, will tow'rds the front ad- 
vance : 
The man whose soul they say " was like a star," 
And some of German - land, and One from 
France ; 
And, of the Sydneys, Algernon; whose word 

Writ on our shield bears freedom's fruit for aye ; 
179 



180 CANDLEMAS NIGHT 

And those Greek youths that Athens' rights re- 
stored 

Shall hold his hand in theirs, and Wendell say, 
" Beloved Harmodius ! thou didst never die ; 

Aristogeiton ! here is for thy sword 
A myrtle of Mount Vernon, plucked this day." 

Sing, heavy heart, for heaviness — 
Till Music's burden make thine less. 
Life is not all that children think, 
But graybeards at its failures wink 
And find in harmony relief 
From touches of remembered grief ; 
For Age well knows he nothing knows, 
And life, in drawing to its close, 
Seems in a deeper mystery mailed, 
And all the clouds that erst prevailed 
From time to time with gleams of light 
Gather to deeper folds of night, 
Impenetrable as to us 
Th' envolumed hippopotamus. 
Then, heavy heart, for heaviness 
Sing on and make thy misery less ; 
In God's name use whatever art 
May cure that heaviness of heart, 
And thank the Giver who relents 
Thus much of his austere intents 



CANDLEMAS NIGHT 181 

And lends the setting of our sun 
Rose-colored clouds to gild the dun 
That looms behind the horizon's line, 
Where unknown seas and skies combine. 



ON A PHOTOGRAPH RECEIVED FROM 
A FRIEND IN ROME 

Perch& la faccia mia si t' innamora ? 

Dante. 

Pearl of Savoy ! so precious to the heart 
Of all Italians, and of all who love 
That land of Italy, if some apart 
Who dwell from Italy's air and Italy's tongue 
Fail of remembrance, — when they look above 
The private altar where they daily do 
Their matins and their vespertine devotions, 
Beside the cross they see thy picture too, 
Where Victor's name is near Immanuel's hung ; 
And though from Tiber sundered by the ocean, 
Tiber, and Arno, and Cisalpine Po, 
Beholding that bright face, the fond emotion 
Of country comes to them on bended knees : 

O Marglierita la sujoerha, — Queen ! 
In this New World which thy great Genoese 
Gave to mankind, — thou hast one lover here 
Who bows before thy majesty of mien, 
And for thy land's sake holds thine image dear. 

182 



ON A HEAD OF HERMIONE 

PAINTED BY WILLIAM WILLARD 

Look on this lady ! and behold in her 
What women could be, and what women were, 
In days gone by, before the excess of books 
Had weighed their natures down and marred their 

looks : 
A face that could not frown, and if it smile, 
Reveals a soul incapable of guile ; 
Spirito gentil ! believing others clean, 
Thinking no scandal, noting nothing mean ; 
As far away from sourness as from vanity, 
Perfect in purity, — not Puritanity. 

183 



TO A LADY 

WITH A HEAD OF DIANA 

My Christmas gifts were few : to one 
A fan, to keep love's flame alive, 

Since even to the constant sun 
Twilight and setting must arrive ; 

And to another — she who sent 

That splendid toy, an empty purse — - 

I gave, though not for satire meant, 
An emptier thing — a scrap of verse ; 

For thee I chose Diana's head, 

Graved by a cunning hand in Rome, 

To whose dim shop my feet were led 
By sweet remembrances of home. 

'T was with a kind of pagan feeling 
That I my little treasure bought, — 

My mood I care not for concealing, — 
" Great is Diana ! " was my thought. 
184 



TO A LADY 185 

Methought, howe'er we change our creeds, 
Whether to Jove or God we bend, 

By various paths religion leads 
All spirits to a single end. 

The goddess of the woods and fields, 
The healthful huntress, undefiled, 

Now with her fabled brother yields 
To sinless Mary and her child. 

But chastity and truth remain 
Still the same virtues as of yore, 

Whether we kneel in Christian fane 
Or old mythologies adore. 

What though the symbol were a lie, — 
Since the ripe world hath wiser grown, — 

If any goodness grew thereby, 
I will not scorn it for mine own. 

So I selected Dian's head 

From out the artist's glittering show ; 
And this shall be my gift, I said, 

To one that bears the silver bow ; 

To her whose quiet life has been 
The mirror of as calm a heart ; 



186 TO A LADY 

Above temptation from the din 
Of cities, and the pomp of art ; 

Who still hath spent her active days 
Cloistered amid her happy hills, 

Not ignorant of worldly ways, 

But loving more the woods and rills. 

And thou art she to whom I give 
This image of the virgin queen, 

Praying that thou, like her, mayst live 
Thrice blest ! in being seldom seen. 



WITH A GIFT OF LILY-BUDS 

Lilies lightly come in spring- 
Where they find best blossoming : 
Edwin's grandchild! rosy-pale, 
When these lilies of the vale 
Warm their hearts in thy soft hand, 
Thou shalt see their buds expand 
As one after April snows 
Sees blue violets' eyes unclose. 

Mine be only winter flowers, 
Nursed through many sunless hours 
In her chamber, late who lay 
Dying many a bitter day, 
Counting every stroke of bell 
All night long, till morning fell 
On her spirit — like a cloud ; 
Some of these lay on her shroud. 

Take them! touch them— let them see 
Those fair eyes, and straightway be 
Fully blown ; then kiss thy lips, 

And their sweet breath in thy room, 

187 



188 WITH A GIFT OF LILY-BUDS 

Though the sun were in eclipse, 
Shall be sunshine and perfume ; 

Touch but thy finger tips 

My tender buds, and they will bloom. 



WATCHING THE RIVER 

All to the rich doth not belong, 

Nor to the proud the whole world's peace 
Here in these woods are books and song, 

Labors and loves that never cease : 

From care we revel in release, 
And seek not what we could not find, 

Glory in gold — but look within, 
Hoping our harvest in the mind. 

Not learning of the learned sort, 

Not wisdom of the worldly wise 
(We live remote and life is short), 

But such as comes to common eyes : 

To watch Antares at his rise, 
The Greater and the Lesser Bear, 

To find Andromeda, or tell 
The stars of Cassiopeia's chair. 

Wise men and true in cities dwell, 

But ah ! one dwells there — Discontent ! 

With whom to live, if less than hell, 
Is like it : there of late I went ; 
189 



190 WATCHING THE RIVER 

To my friend's door my steps I bent, 
And found him pillowed — not in pain, 

But watchers by ; he knew me not : 
Midnight was brooding on his brain ! 

O God ! that good man — oh ! for gold, 
For gold that father, friend, high-priest 

Of all the charities, had sold 
His faculties, and now the least 
Of all that ministered — his beast — 

Might have stood sovereign over him : 
No motion in the mind — that brow — 

Thought's beacon tower, and now so dim ! 

Never again, my soul, repine 

That I have nothing, having all : 
Health and myself, and love like thine, 

Dearest, who shar'st my humble hall ! 

Nor ever be my soul a thrall 
To avarice or ambition vain : 

Heaven shield me from the hardened heart 
That brings the softness to the brain ! 



NiENIA AMORIS 

Should love return before I die, 
If haply love could live so long, 

He will not come with smile or sigh, 
Nor wake in me the gift of song. 

No, rather with a lordly scorn 
I would receive the fatal trust, 

For pleasures out of season born 
Are ashes at the core, and dust. 

And beauty's eyes might plead in vain, 
And music's voice intone forever — 

I should hear nothing in the strain 
But one sad note of never, never. 
191 



THINK NOT OF ME AMID THE CROWD 

Think not of me amid the crowd 
Where with her finery and her bells 

The fashion of the world is loud, 

And woman shows the charms she sells. 

I would not have my image rise 

Among those phantoms of the street, 

That pirouette like a pack of flies 
And idly as they came retreat. 

Give them a glance and let them pass, 
Forgot as they were born to be, 

But in their multitudinous mass, 
O lady ! never mingle me. 

Rather in life's lone hour, dear love ! 

And thy still chamber's inmost place, 
Set in thy thought my bust above 

All other forms and every face ; 

Or when thy cheek is dewed with tears 
On some dark day when friends depart, 
192 



THINK NOT OF ME AMID THE CROWD 193 

When life before thee seems all fears 
And all remembrance one long smart, 

Then in the secret sacred cell 

Thy soul keeps for her hour of prayer, 

Breathe but my name, that I may dwell 
Part of thy worship alway there. 



IN REMEMBRANCE 

Our last rose left us long ago ; 

Then the ripe berries came and went ; 
The tides run high that late were low, 

And midsummer is well-nigh spent. 

A lonely primrose at the gate 

Hangs wilted, watching for her wheels ; 
Lady, the lily says — 't is late, 

Our high-top orchard slighted feels, 

And the rank burdock spreads apace, 
Fell harbor of the venomous fly, 

And in the sweetbrier's wonted place 
The deadly nightshade drooping by 

The garden wall begins to move 

Of sadness in my thought a touch, — 

A fancy I would fain reprove 

And dare not dwell on overmuch, — 

194 



IN REMEMBRANCE 195 

The shadow of a passing doubt 

I never uttered unto men ; 
'T is this, — what were my life without 

Her — should she never come again ! 



EPITAPH ON A CHILD 

This little seed of life and love, 

Just lent us for a day, 
Came like a blessing from above, — 

Passed like a dream away. 

And when we garnered in the earth 

The foison that was ours, 
We felt that burial was but birth 

To spirits, as to flowers. 

And still that benediction stays, 

Although its angel passed : 
Dear God ! thy ways, if bitter ways, 

We learn to love at last. 

But for the dream, — it broke indeed, 
Yet still great comfort gives : 

What was a dream is now our creed, — 
We know our darling lives. 

196 



STANZAS 

" We are such stuff as dreams are made of." 

I 

We have forgot what we have been, 
And what we are we little know ; 

We fancy new events begin, 
But all has happened long ago. 

II 

Through many a verse life's poem flows, 
But still, though seldom marked by men, 

At times returns the constant close ; 
Still the old chorus comes again. 

in 
The childish grief, the boyish fear, 

The hope in manhood's breast that burns, 
The doubt, the transport, and the tear, 

Each mood, each impulse, oft returns. 



197 



198 STANZAS 

IV 

Before mine infant eyes had hailed 
The new-born glory of the day, 

When the first wondrous morn unveiled 
The breathing world that round me lay, 



The same strange darkness o'er my brain 
Folded its close, mysterious wings, 

The ignorance of joy or pain 

That each recurring midnight brings. 

VI 

And oft my feelings make me start, 
Like footprints on some desert shore, 

As if the chambers of my heart 

Had heard their shadowy step before. 

VII 

So, looking into thy fond eyes, 

Strange memories come to me, as though 
Somewhere — perchance in Paradise — 

I had adored thee long ago. 



SLEEP 

Somntjs — or Morpheus was his name ? 

I have forgot ; I cannot keep 
My schoolboy learning : as it came 

It went — I mean the god of sleep. 

That god and I were once fast friends, 
But now his face I seldom see ; 

More oft the blessed rain descends 
In Egypt, than his dews on me. 

Ah me ! the joy I had in dreams — 
The nightly comfort to forget — 

Is mine no more ; the morning beams 
On eyes like faded asters, wet : 

Yes, moistened oft with poisonous tears, 
Till the burnt lashes look so few, 

You might suppose that threescore years 
Were mine, instead of thirty-two ! 

Well, I can wait a little more, 
A little longer wake and weep, 
199 



200 SLEEP 

Until the welcome grave restore 
The bliss of an unbroken sleep. 

Let me remember Him that while 

His tired disciples round Him slept — 

(The sinless born, that knew no guile !) • 
Watched in Gethsemane, and wept. 



TO A " MAGDALEN - 



A PAINTING BY GUIDO 



Mary, when thou wert a virgin, 

Ere the first, the fatal sin 
Stole into thy bosom's chamber, 

Leading six companions in ; 
Ere those eyes had wept an error, 

What thy beauty must have been ! 

II 

Ere those lips had paled their crimson, 
Quivering with the soul's despair, 

Ere the smile they wore had withered 
In thine agony of prayer, 

Or, instead of pearls, the tear-drops 
Gleamed amid thy streaming hair ; 

in 

While, in ignorance of evil, 

Still thy heart serenely dreamed, 

And the morning light of girlhood 
On thy cheeks' young garden beamed, 
201 



202 TO A "MAGDALEN" 

Where the abundant rose was blushing, 
Not of earth couldst thou have seemed ! 



IV 

"When thy frailty fell upon thee, 
Lovely wert thou, even then ; 

Shame itself could scarce disarm thee 
Of the charms that vanquished men. 

Which of Salem's purest daughters 
Matched the sullied Magdalen ? 



But thy Master's eye beheld thee, 
Foul and all unworthy heaven ; 

Pitied, pardoned, purged thy spirit 
Of its black, pernicious leaven ; 

Drove the devils from out the temple • 
All the dark, the guilty seven. 

VI 

Oh, the beauty of repentance ! 

Mary, tenfold fairer now 
Art thou with disheveled tresses, 

And that anguish on thy brow ! 
Ah, might every sinful sister 

Grow in beauty, even as thou ! 



THE GROOMSMAN TO HIS MISTRESS 

I 

Every wedding, says the proverb, 

Makes another, soon or late ; 
Never yet was any marriage 

Entered in the book of Fate, 
But the names were also written 

Of the patient pair that wait. 

II 

Blessings, then, upon the morning 
When my friend, with fondest look, 

By the solemn rites' permission, 
To himself his mistress took, 

And the Destinies recorded 
Other two within their book. 

in 

While the priest fulfilled his office, 
Still the ground the lovers eyed, 

And the parents and the kinsmen 
Aimed their glances at the bride, 
203 



204 THE GROOMSMAN TO HIS MISTRESS 

But the groomsmen eyed the virgins 
Who were waiting at her side. 

IV 

Three there were that stood beside her ; 

One was dark, and one was fair, 
But nor fair nor dark the other, 

Save her Arab eyes and hair ; 
Neither dark nor fair I call her, 

Yet she was the fairest there. 



While her groomsman — shall I own it? 

Yes, to thee, and only thee — 
Gazed upon this dark-eyed maiden 

Who was fairest of the three, 
Thus he thought : " How blest the bridal 

Where the bride were such as she ! " 

VI 

Then I mused upon the adage, 
Till my wisdom was perplexed, 

And I wondered, as the churchman 
Dwelt upon his holy text, 

Which of all who heard his lesson 
Should require the service next. 



THE GROOMSMAN TO HIS MISTRESS 205 

VII 

Whose will be the next occasion 

For the flowers, the feast, the wine ? 

Thine, perchance, my dearest lady, 
Or, who knows ? — it may be mine : 

What if 't were — forgive the fancy — 
What if 't were — both mine and thine ? 



"SOTTO L'USBERGO DEL SENTIRSI PURO " 

Brush not the floor where my lady hath trod, 
Lest one light sign of her foot you mar ; 

For where she hath walked, in the Spring, on the 
sod, 
There, I have noticed, most violets are. 

Touch not her work, nor her book, nor a thing 
That her exquisite finger hath only pressed ; 

But fan the dust off with a plume that the wing 
Of a ring-dove let fall, on his way to his nest. 

I think the sun stops, if a moment she stand, 
In the morn, sometimes, at her father's door ; 

And the brook where she may have dipt her 
hand 
Runs clearer to me than it did before. 

Under the mail of " I know me pure," 
I dare to dream of her ; and, by day, 

As oft as I come to her presence, I 'm sure 

Had I one low thought, she would look it away. 
206 



"LIKE AS THE LARK" 

" Quale allodetta che in aere si spazia 
Prima cantando, e poi tace, contenta 
Dell' ultima doleezza che la sazia." 

Dante : Paradiso, XX. 

Like as the lark that, soaring higher and higher, 
Singeth awhile, then stops as 't were content 

With his last sweetness, having filled desire, 
So paused oar bard ; not for his force was spent, 

Nor that a string was loosened in his lyre, 
But, having said his best and done his best, 

He could not better what was given before, 
And threescore years and ten, demanding rest, 

Whispered, They want thee on the other shore ! 
And now he walks amid the learned throng, 

Haply with him who was the sixth of those 
Who towered above the multitude in song, 

Or by the side of Geoffrey Chaucer goes, 
Who shall remember with his wonted smile 
How James found music in his antique style. 
But we '11 not mingle fancies with our sorrow 
Nor from his own imagination borrow ; 

207 



208 "LIKE AS A LARK" 

Holmes, who is left us, best could speak his praise 
Who knew his heart so well and loved his lays, 
And whom Heaven crowns with greater length of 
days. 



INSCRIPTION 

FOR AN ALMS CHEST MADE OF CAMPHOR-WOOD 

This fragrant box that breathes of India's balms 
Hath one more fragrance, — for it asketh alms; 
But though 't is sweet and blessed to receive, 
You know who said, " It is more blest to give : " 
Give, then, receive his blessing; and for me 
Thy silent boon sufficient blessing be ! 

If Ceylon's isle, that bears the bleeding trees, 
With any perfume load the orient breeze ; 
If Heber's Muse, by Ceylon as he sailed, 
A pleasant odor from the shore inhaled, — 
More lives in me ; for underneath my lid 
A sweetness as of sacrifice is hid. 

Thou gentle almoner, in passing by, 
Smell of my wood, and scan me with thine eye : 
I, too, from Ceylon bear a spicy breath 
That might put warmness in the lungs of death ; 
A simple chest of scented wood I seem ; 
But oh ! within me lurks a golden beam, — 

209 



210 INSCRIPTION 

A beam celestial, and a silver din, 
As though imprisoned angels played within ; 
Hushed in my heart, my fragrant secret dwells : 
If thou wouldst learn it, Paul of Tarsus tells ; 
No jangled brass nor tinkling cymbal sound, 
For in my bosom Charity is found. 



A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

" Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
This bird of dawning singeth all night long : 
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
The nights are wholesome then ; no planets strike ; 
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, — 
So gracious and so hallowed is the time." 

O bird of dawning ! all the night 

Sing ! for the season is at hand 
When hearts are glad, and faces bright, 

And happiness is Heaven's command : 
Shout, chanticleer ! that all may hear 
Whom cares have chastened through the year ; 

Christmas is come to cheer the land ! 

And now no spirit walks — but one 
Of love, nor shall that spirit cease : 

No planet rules — except the Sun 

Of Righteousness, the Prince of Peace ! 

And that whose ray first led the way 

To where the babe in Bethlehem lay — 
The star that ne'er shall know decrease. 
211 



EASTER HYMN 



CHERUBINI 



Who is this that comes from Edom, 
All his raiment bright with blood ? 

Lord of love and life and freedom, 
Lifting man from death's dark flood. 

Bring fresh roses for adorning 
Temple stairs and sacred aisle ; 

Ever be this Easter morning 

Welcomed with triumphal smile. 

Rose of Sharon ! for his altar 

Lilies of the valley bring ; 
Sing from David's holy psalter 

Anthems to our Heavenly King ! 

My Redeemer, — that he liveth 
Well I know ; and we believe 

God, who every blessing giveth, 
Man of hope will not bereave. 
212 



EASTER HYMN 213 

Never more shall mortal sorrow 

Wake in human hearts despair ; 
Never shall the doubtful morrow 

Crush beyond our strength to bear. 

No more fear of death forever ! 

Angels watch by every grave ; 
When the soul and body sever 

They will come, and He shall save. 

Pomp of organs ! virgin voices ! 

Mingle music for the morn 
When the soul of man rejoices 

O'er his new life, deathless born. 



TO A POET IN THE CITY 

Chekish thy muse ! for life hath little more, 
Save what we hold in common with the herd : 
Oh, blessing of these woods ! to walk unstirred 
By clash of commerce and the city's roar ! 
What finds the scholar in those flaming walls 
But wearied people, hurrying to and fro, 
Most with too high, and many without aim, 
Crowded in vans or sweltering in huge halls 
To hear loud emptiness or see the show ? 
Were this a life to 'scape the Muses' blame? 
Rather than such would I the Parcae ask, 
Folding mine arms, to stretch me on the floor 
Where Agamemnon in his golden mask 
Dreams not of Argolis or Argos more. 

214 



SONNET 

ON A PHOTOGRAPH OF AN UNKNOWN LADY, SENT IN A 
LETTER 

Smile on and be my sunlight for a while, 
Face that I fain would look at for a day ! 
Who is the lady ? Comes she to our isle ? 
Knows she the color of our Way land clay ? 
She never came here nor will ever come 
To see our meadows and their wealth of hay, 
And the slow Sudbury stream, fringed all the way 
With lilies lovely as herself, almost. 
She never can, and therefore I am dumb, 
And on her beauty gazing like a ghost, 
Or some enchanted spirit chained thereto, 
Can only whisper to my heart, " Alas ! 
Such were the faces Carlo Dolci drew, 
But we, poor souls ! may only glance and pass." 

215 



TO THE NEW ROYALL PROFESSOR 

Learn'd in the law, who leav'st the busy street 
And studious chambers for the gowned chair, 
Amid the cordial friends that speak thee fair 
And thine accession to the laurel greet, 
If one slow scholar in his hushed retreat 
A little longer than the rest forbear, 
'T is but as minstrels that salute some heir 
Wait for still night to make their flutes more sweet. 
And as in heaven there is more joy o'er one 
Repentant worldling than o'er ninety-nine 
Good men who love the world or make it loved, 
So glad Athena glories in the son 
Who turns in manhood to his boyhood's shrine, 
And Harvard welcomes him with hand ungloved. 

216 



"0 YE SWEET HEAVENS!" 

ye sweet heavens ! your silence is to me 
More than all music. With what full delight 

1 come down to my dwelling by the sea 
And look from out the lattice on the night ! 
There the same glories burn serene and bright 
As in my boyhood ; and if I am old 

Are they not also ? Thus my spirit is bold 

To think perhaps we are coeval. Who 

Can tell when first my faculty began 

Of thought? Who knows but I was there with 

you 

When first your Maker's mind, celestial spheres, 

Contrived your motion ere I was a man ? 

Else, wherefore do mine eyes thus fill with tears 

As I, O Pleiades ! your beauty scan ? 

217 



*YIINOS 

Not now for sleep, O slumber-god ! we sue ; 
Hypnus ! not sleep, but give our souls repose ! 
Of the day's music such a mellowing close 
As might have rested Shakespeare from his art, 
Or soothed the spirit of the Tuscan strong 
Who best read life, its passions and its woes, 
And wrought of sorrow earth's divinest song. 
Bring us a mood that might have lulled Mozart ; 
Not stupor, not forgetfulness, not dreams, 
But vivid sense of what is best and rarest, 
And sweet remembrance of the blessed few, 
In the real presence of this fair world's fairest : 
A spell of peace — as 't were by those dear streams 
Boccaccio wrote of, when romance was new. 

218 



SONNET XIII 

FROM THE VITA NUOVA OF DA^TE ALIGHIEKI 

So gentle seems my lady and so pure 
When she greets any one, that scarce the eye 
Such modesty and brightness can endure, 
And the tongue, trembling, falters in reply. 
She never heeds, when people praise her worth, — 
Some in their speech, and many with a pen, — 
But meekly moves, as if sent down to earth 
To show another miracle to men ! 
And such a pleasure from her presence grows 
On him who gazeth, while she passeth by, — 
A sense of sweetness that no mortal knows 
Who hath not felt it, — that the soul's repose 
Is woke to worship, and a spirit flows 
Forth from her face that seems to whisper, " Sigh ! " 

219 



SONNET 

" Then are they glad because they are at rest : and so he 
bringeth them unto the haven where they would be." — Psalter. 

There loomed a great shape lately scarce in sight 
Of Scituate cliffs, — a mountain mid the mist ; 
Perchance an Indiaman, we said ; but hist ! 
Heard you that gun-stroke, out by yonder light ? 
Then the fog thickened in the gathering night; 
No further signal heard (save that dread one 
Which brings back terror even as I write) 
Of the mysterious wanderer ; nor is known 
Aught else of her — but that she comes no more. 
O unknown mourners ! watchers of the sea 
By many a lonely fireside on the shore, 
One thing is sure : He brought them to the breast 
Of that calm haven where you fain would be ; 
And they are glad — because they are at rest. 

220 



BEN DELL' INTELLETTO 

Whenever Good of Intellect comes in, 
Then peace is with us, and a soft control 
Of all harsh thinking ; and but one desire 
Fills every bosom, — to forget the din 
Of outside things, and render up the soul 
To friendship's banquet by an evening fire. 
Then is the season in this world of sin 
That brings new strength, and keepeth us heart- 
whole 
Amid the changes that distress and tire ; 
And when from wisdom we have wanderers been, 
So that a stupor on the spirit stole 
From things unknown, with visions dark and dire, 
In this high presence we restore ourselves 
More than by all the volumes on our shelves. 

221 



TURNING FROM DARWIN TO THOMAS 
AQUINAS 

Unless in thought with thee I often live, 
Angelic doctor ! life seems poor to me. 
What are these bounties, if they only be 
Such boon as farmers to their servants give ? 
That I am fed, and that mine oxen thrive, 
That my lambs fatten, that mine hours are free — 
These ask my nightly thanks on bended knee ; 
And I do thank Him who hath blest my hive, 
And made content my herd, my flock, my bee. 
But, Father ! nobler things I ask from Thee. 
Fishes have sunshine, worms have everything ! 
Are we but apes ? Oh ! give me, God, to know 
I am death's master ; not a scaffolding, 
But a true temple where Christ's word could grow. 

222 



MERCEDES 

Scarce grown to womanhood, to die a Queen ! 
Montpensier's daughter, what a fate was thine ! 
Youngest and loveliest of that Bourbon line 
So long chief actors in the mingled scene 
Of state and sway — the scaffold and the axe ; 
Spiritui tuo sit ceterna Pax ! 
Thy tragedy shall keep thy cypress green, 
And Isabella's name shall be to Spain 
Less dear a memory than the tender tale 
Of thy young love and wedlock — and the wail 
That closed the marriage paean, and the rain 
Of sudden tears, as when an August cloud 
Bursts mid the sunshine. Oh, how cold and pale 
Alfonso, when he kissed thee in thy shroud ! 

223 



IN SAINT JOSEPH'S 

While the priest said "perpetua luceat" 

Sprinkling the palms that graced a maiden's bier, 

I felt a light stream in upon my soul ; 

And one that near me in the chancel sate, 

Who was to the departed soul most dear, 

Saw the same light, as my hand softly stole 

To hers, and suddenly a glory played 

Around those palms that seemed to check my 

breath ; 

Even as he prayed for light the darkness fled 

To both of us : I looked into her eyes 

And saw through tears a raptured look that said — 

A strength new-born doth in my spirit rise, 

And though before me lies my sister dead, 

I also feel the life that lives in death. 

224 



SONNET 

Lift me, Lord Jesus, for the time is nigh 
When I must climb unto thy cross at last ; 
The world fades out, its lengthening shadows fly, 
Earth's pomp is passing and the music past ; 
Phantoms flock round me, multiplying fast ; 
Nothing seems tangible ; the good I thought 
Most permanent hath perished. Come away, 

sated spirit, from the vacant scene ; 
The curtain drops upon the spun-out play, 
The benches are deserted. Let us go, 
Forget the foolish clown, the king, the queen, 
The idle story with its love and woe ; 

1 seem to stand before a minster screen 
And hear faint organs in the distance blow. 

225 



PROEM TO A TRANSLATION OF MANZONI'S 
ODE ON THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON 

(IL CINQUE MAGGIO) 
INSCRIBED TO MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 

I 

Read what the Christian poet saith, 

O lady ! in my faithful rhyme, 
Of the great Captain and his death ; 

And venerate, with me, that Faith 
Which, in the aspiring man of crime, 

Whom gentle goodness must abhor, — 
Who carried into every clime 

The fury and the waste of war, — 
Some seeds of pardon can discern ; 
Yea, from his dying pillow learn 
A lesson worthy of the solemn strain 
That long as all his triumphs shall remain. 

II 

Him and his history of blood, 
Him and the ruin that he made, 
226 



PROEM 227 

By Moskwa's rivulet and Egypt's flood, 

All his bad victories, displayed 
On many an arch and boastful pile 
That wake the wandering Briton's smile 

To find no name of England there : — 
These can the lenient Muse recall, 
And breathe forgiveness over all, 

With a majestic power. 

in 

Child of his time, the poet speaks 

Such thoughts as to the time belong ; 
No more his private malice wreaks 

In the small vengeance of a song : 
That day of doom — that bitter day, 
When Hate sate sovran o'er his lay, 

And bade him, in his burning line, 

To an eternal curse consign 
God's universe, — hath passed away. 

IV 

For, men who seem to shape their age, 
Yea, fashion history to their will, 

And on Fame's perdurable page 

Write their own record, good or ill, — 

Even these, if rightly scanned, 

Are but the ivory keys upon the board, 



228 PROEM 

Moving, to lose or win, 
By force of mitre, crown, or sword, — 

Yet all their little leaps have been 
Directed by a wiser hand ! 



Therefore the gracious Lombard muse, benign 

Interpreter of Rome, 
Finds in this Attila one spark divine, 

That hath in heaven its home ; 
So welcomes him to his eternal rest ! 
With such high music as befits the blest. 

VI 

Not so the grave Etrurian lyre 

Had sounded, in that sterner age 
When vengeance thrilled the quivering wire, 
When what the poet thought was fire, 

And what he said was rage ; 
When the great Ghibelline, gloomy and unsparing, 
Moved like Fate's shadow, at his girdle wearing 
Peter's lent keys, — the while his iron hand 
Held Pluto's passport to the sunless land ! 

VII 

He, to these images of wrong 

Wherewith his unforgiving heart 



PROEM 229 

Peopled the pitiless realm of his dark song — 
To Dionysius and his tyrant throng 

Had added Bonaparte : 
And with the rest of that fell brood, — 

Pyrrhus, and Obizzo the fair, 

And the grim Paduan with the raven hair, — 

Had sunk him in that river of despair, 
To drink his fill of blood. 

VIII 

But He that, in the midst of wrath, 

Remembers mercy still, 
Reveals by Calvary a path 

Conducting out of ill, 
Into the glad, immortal fields above, 
Where his great justice is allayed by Love. 
Be this our trust : and may the lofty bard 

Who rules the Latin minstrelsy to-day 
Soften within us what is harsh or hard. 

Here calumny should cease — 
Peace for the weary soldier let us pray, 
Since by that lone and lowly death-bed lay 

His cross, — who was the Prince of Peace. 



"0 REST OF GOD" 

"Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano, 
E sarai meco, senza fine, cive 
Diquella Roma onde Cristo e Romano." 

Dante : Purgatorio. 

O REST of God that endeth every pain ! 
O smile serene of peace that shall remain ! 
O birth of being ! when this faulty frame 
Falls into nothingness and Death 's a name : 
Hope, no more heartache, with possession blest, 
Come to full fruit, possessing and possessed ; 
Earth's passions perishing, now love alone 
Springs to its natural growth beside God's throne. 

Bright soul ! beloved best of best and wise, 
True-hearted woman of the dauntless eyes 
That looked on death without dismay, and saw 
The future dawning with abated awe, 
A little while a sylvan thou shalt dwell 
In silent chambers of the woodland fell, 
But no long time ; already to thy sense 
The calm is perfect that we saw commence 

230 



"0 REST OF GOD" 231 

Ere the last breath had left thy lip, the while 
Heaven's light seemed breaking on that parting 

smile ! 
And we believe that, sure as June will bring 
Blossoms and bees and all the race that sing, 
In God's good season, such a love as thine 
Must vindicate its love in courts divine, 
Strong in those words that all resembling thee 
Shall one day hear, — " Ye did it unto me." 



MORNING DREAMS 

" Presso al mattin del ver si sogna." — Dante. 

Love, let 's be thankful we are past the time 
When griefs are comfortless; and, though we 
mourn, 

Feel in our sorrow something now sublime, 
And in each tear the sweetness of a kiss. 
Weep on and smile, then, for we know in this 

Our immortality, — that nothing dies 
Within our hearts, but something new is born, 

And what is roughly taken from our eyes 
Gently comes back in visions of the morn, 
When dreams are truest. Oh, but death is bliss ! 

I feel as certain, looking on the face 
Of a dead sister, smiling from her shroud, 

That our sweet angel hath but changed her place, 
And passed to peace, as when, amid the crowd 

Of the mad city, I feel sure of rest 
Beyond the hills, ... a few hours further west. 

232 



PARAPHRASE OP A PASSAGE IN DANTE 

PARADISO, CANTO XXI 

The poet meets in Paradise the spirit of San Pietro Damiano, 
a man famous in his time for the purity and austerity of his 
life, and for his endeavors to reform the dissolute habits of the 
Romish clergy in that age, and the pompous luxury of their 
prelates. 

It is supposed that he was born in Ravenna, about 1007. 
'Having* withdrawn from the world into the monastery of Santa 
Croce di Fonte Avellana, he was called from this retirement and 
employed in many important missions, in which he showed so 
much ability that he was made Cardinal and Bishop of Ostia. 
Landino says that he was not merely called, but forcibly com- 
pelled to this dignity. 

The subjoined paraphrase has so little claim to any exactness, 
that the thirty lines of the original have been amplified into 
ninety. It is hoped there may be found a closer adherence to 
the spirit of the text — and of San Damiano. 

Between the Hadrian and the Tyrrhene shores, 
And not far distant from the Tuscan line, 

A jutting crag above the thunder soars, 
Cresting with ridgy rocks the Apennine. 

Catria 't is called, and oft the tempest roars 
Down in the region of the fig and vine, 
233 



234 PARAPHRASE OF A PASSAGE IN DANTE 

While sunny Catria shines in cloudless June ; 

And at its foot a consecrated cell 
From the rough granite opens, rudely-hewn, 

A fit abode for one who bids farewell 
To life's harsh jar, desiring to attune 

His thoughts to heaven, and in seclusion dwell. 

There, in my peaceful hermitage, serene, 
I with so constant zeal my God obeyed, 

That, with continual fasts and vigils lean, 

Through summer heats and winter frosts I 
prayed. 

Clad in a garment like my Saviour's mean, 
Of simple olives my repast I made ; 

And, on the great hereafter wholly bent, 
Weeding the garden of my soul from sin, 

The lonely meditative hours I spent, 
Above the busy world's distracting din. 

And joyous, in my rocky cloister pent, 
Abundant harvests did I gather in, 

Upon that bleak and barren cliff, to pour 
Into the garners of the Lord. Alas ! 

That sacred seat is hallowed now no more 
By morning orisons or midnight mass, 

Or sandaled anchorite that numbers o'er 
His holy beads as the slow moments pass. 



PARAPHRASE OF A PASS A GE IN DANTE 235 

But now, sole occupant, the lizard crawls 
At noonday round my desolate retreat ; 

Nor ever sanctified are those rude walls 
By the blest echoes of a pilgrim's feet ; 

And with a low, reproachful murmur falls 
The rill beside my old accustomed seat, 

Where, clay by day, at Avellana's fount, 

By men Pietro Damiano named, 
Strict in my stewardship's exact account, 

And through Romagna for my penance famed, 
I sat and mused on mine adopted mount, 

Serving my Master with a life unblamed. 

Ah ! what availed it that an abbey rose 

With pillared pomp my modest rock to grace ; 

In those cold aisles Devotion's essence froze. 
Dearer to Heaven was that sequestered place 

Which for my chapel and my cave I chose, 
Wherein, recluse, to run my godly race. 

But Honors came, and Pomp found out my nest, 
And like a weak hare I was hunted down ; 

They planted vanities within my breast, 

And robed my shoulders with the scarlet gown. 

Then my long days of pensiveness and rest 
Were poorly bartered for the world's renown. 



236 PARAPHRASE OF A PASSAGE IN DANTE 

To Rome they dragged me, and my thin white 
hairs 
Were by the Cardinal's red hat concealed ; 
There the harsh lessons of my daily cares 

Disclosed new truths and hidden wrongs re- 
vealed, 
For soon I learned how oft the priesthood wears 
Its reverend garb for Vice a mask and shield ; 

I saw the pride, the falsehood of their state ; 

I saw the low, the sensual, and the vain, 
Implored for pardon and dispensing fate ; 

I saw them fawn and flatter, trick and feign ; 
I saw their outward smiles and hidden hate, 

Their lust and luxury, and thirst for gain. 

Saint Peter, barefoot, on his mission came ; 

And Paul, a "chosen vase," in whom was poured 
So lavishly the heavenly Spirit's flame, 

Snatched his chance meal at any casual board, 
And, reckoning honest poverty no shame, 

Above all wants in lofty virtue soared. 

Oft in the Lateran I thought of this, 

Amid the tinseled priests' tumultuous tread, 

As on the congregations, bowed submiss, 

Its fragrant shower the fuming censer shed ; 



PARAPHRASE OF A PASSAGE IN DANTE 237 

And some stooped low the foot of him to kiss 
Whose Master " had not where to lay his head." 

And when I Ve seen, on some high holiday, 

Through the live streets their long processions 
roll, 

And the fat, ermined friars, on palfreys gay, — 
Both creatures covered with one furry stole, — 

Him I remembered, robed in mean array, 
Who entered Zion on an ass's foal. 

He like an humble peasant meekly rode, 
While shouted forth Jerusalem a song, 

And with palm -boughs his gladsome pathway 
strewed ; 
Our modern pastors need a hand full strong 

On either side to prop their helpless load ; 
O patience ! patience ! that endur'st so long ! 



GUIDO'S AURORA 

IN THE ROSPIGLIOSI PALACE, ROME 

" La concubina di Titan antico 
Gia s' imbianeava al balco d' oriente, 
Fuor delle braccia del suo dolee amico ; 
Di gemme la sua fronte era lucente." 

Dante : Purgatorio, IX. 

Forth from the arms of her beloved now, 

Whitening the Orient steep, the Concubine 
Of old Tithonus comes, her lucent brow 
Glistening with gems, her fair hands filled with 
flowers, 

That drop their violet odors on the brine, 

While from her girdle pours a wealth of pearls 
Round ocean's rocks and every vessel's prow 

That cuts the laughing billow's crested curls. 
Behind her step the busy, sober Hours, 

With much to do, — and they must move apace : 
Wake up, Apollo ! should the women stir, 

And thou be lagging ? brighten up thy face ! 
(Those eyes of Phaeton more brilliant were.) 

Hurry, dull god ! Hyperion, to thy race ! 
238 



GUIDO'S AURORA 239 

Thy steeds are galloping, but thou seein'st slow: 
Hesper, glad wretch, hath newly fed his torch, 

And flies before thee, and the world cries, Go ! 
Light the dark woods, the dew-drenched moun- 
tain scorch ! 

Phoebus, Aurora calls, why linger so ? 



FRANCESCA DA RIMINI 

A PICTURE BY SCHEFFER 

You restless ghosts that roam the lurid air, 
I feel your misery, — for I was there ; 
Yea, not in dreams, but breathing and alive 
Have seen the storm, and heard the tempest drive ; 
Yet while the sleet went, withering as it past, 
And the mad hail gave scourges to the blast, 
While all was black below and flame above, 
Have thought, — 't is little to the storm of Love : 
You know that sadly, know it to your cost, 
Ah ! too much loving, and forever lost ! 

Still, suffering spirits, even your doom affords 

Kisses and tears, however scant of words ; 

Brief is your story, but it liveth long, — 

Oh, thank for that your poet and his song ! 

Be it some comfort, in that hateful Hell, 

You had a lover of your love to tell ; 

One that knew all — the ecstasy, the gloom, 

All the sad raptures that precede the tomb, 

The fluttering hope, the triumph, and the care, 

The wild emotion, and the sure despair. 

240 



FRANCESCA DA RIMINI 241 

Not every friend hath friendship's finer touch, 
To pardon passion, when it mounts too much ; 
Not every soul hath proved its own excess, 
And feared the throb it still would not repress. 
But he whose numbers gave you unto fame, 
Lord of the lay, — I need not speak his name, — 
Was one who felt ; whose life was love or hate ; 
Born for extremes, he scorned the middle state ; 
And well he knew that, since the world began, 
The heart was master in the world of man. 



IN ECLIPSE 

Peayer strengthens us ; but oft we faint 
And find no courage even to pray ; 

Oh, that in Heaven some pitying saint 
For me might Ave-Mary say ! 

For sometimes present pleasures drown 
The serious vein, and some dark days 

Of great, overmastering anguish frown 
Amid the sacred tapers' blaze. 

Before the morning- watch I rose — 
I say before this morn's — to kneel, 

But of my voice the fountain froze, 

Yea, something seemed my soul to seal. 

And now I know what rosaries mean : 
That oftentimes the heart is weak, 

And cannot to the Sire unseen 
Its dumb petition duly speak. 

Yet every bead may count with Him, 
Who healed the palsied and the blind, 
242 



IN ECLIPSE 243 

Kestored the lame and withered limb, 
And lifted the disordered mind, 

As mine was then, who had no might 

Of utterance with mine icy lips, 
For one great Shadow veiled the light 

Till hope itself was in eclipse. 

Eclipses come, and also pass ; 

Let us not dream like savage men, 
With shouts and cries and sounding brass 

To scare that Shadow off again ; 

But take the phases of our thought, 
As of the planets — wanderers they, 

Even as ourselves, but better taught, 
Through gloom or glory, to obey — 

As of the moon, that many times 

Conceals in clouds her crescent sheen, 

But when her fullness cometh, climbs 
Above Orion's front, serene. 



LUCERNA SIS PEDIBUS MEIS 

Lamp to my feet ! shine forth into my soul 
That I may better see what way I tread 
In the dark hours and when I lose control 
Of mine own steps, by vague desires misled. 
In faltering moments, when I scarce can pray, 
Through failing faith, or wandering thoughts, and 

sink 
Back to my bondage, let thy kindly ray, 
Lamp to my feet ! prevent me on the brink. 

244 



PARADISI GLORIA 

" O frate mio ! ciascuna e cittadina 
D'una vera citta" .... 

There is a city, builded by no hand, 
And unapproachable by sea or shore, 

And unassailable by any band 

Of storming soldiery for evermore. 

There we no longer shall divide our time 
By acts or pleasures, — doing petty things 

Of work or warfare, merchandise or rhyme ; 
But we shall sit beside the silver springs 

That flow from God's own footstool, and behold 
Sages and martyrs, and those blessed few 

Who loved us once and were beloved of old, 
To dwell with them and walk with them anew, 

In alternations of sublime repose, 
Musical motion, the perpetual play 

Of every faculty that Heaven bestows 

Through the bright, busy, and eternal day. 
245 



SURSUM CORDA! 

Whence comes this peace ? In truth it doth sur- 
pass 
Man's understanding — who can tell me whence ? 
Wretched I was and weak, and went to mass 
In such dismay as unbelief will bring, — 
A thing of iron with a heart of brass. 
But even as I knelt a peace immense 
Flooded my soul ; a voice began to sing 
Asperges me, and then I shall be clean, 
Oh, sprinkle me with hyssop ! if you can 
Thereby make white again as Wayland snow 
Drifted in orchards this worn spirit of mine, 
And I will come again, thou white-robed man, 
And through the mist of many things divine 
Shall at thy Sursum Corda ! leap from woe. 

246 



NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 

Page 2. Was peace, that pilgrim s one request. 
It is told of Dante that, when he was roaming over Italy, he 
came to a certain monastery, where he was met by one of the 
friars, who blessed him, and asked what was his desire ; to which 
the weary stranger simply answered, " Pace." 

Page 63. So the young master of the Roman realm. — Alexander 
Severus. 

Page 65. To wed the Assabet and take thy name. 
" Rura quae Liris quietis 
Mordet aquis, taciturnus annus." 

Horace. 

The Sudbury flows through Wayland meadows to meet the 
Assabet and form the Concord River, which joins the Merrimac 
in Lowell. It may be considered the Liris of New England. 

Page 65. Meek lover of the good, though under spell. 
" But thou, meek lover of the good ! 
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven." 

Emerson in Brahma. 

Page 65. Of those who, dazzled by some sundog's ray. 

"Sundog" is a word hardly known in England; but in New 
England is applied to the luminous counterfeit of the sun oc- 
casionally seen here, — a mock-sun easily mistaken for the god 
himself. 

Page 66. These gentle pagans to their straw-built shed. 

" Pagan" is used here in its original sense of rustics, people 
who prefer to dwell, or who must d>well, in villages or places 
like " Brook Farm," which Hawthorne has celebrated in his 
" Blithedale Romance. 1 ' 



248 NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 

Page 66. In Sleepy Hollow, and the word "forgive." 
The Lord's Prayer was said at Emerson's grave by all the 
assembled mourners. 

Page 66. In yonder grave thy Druid lies. 

" Long, long thy stone and pointed clay 
Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes : 
O vales and wildwood, shall he say — 
In yonder grave your Druid lies ! " 

Collins. 

Page 74. " Peace to thee, Mark ! evangelist of mine ! " 
The legend of the winged Lion of St. Mark, seen everywhere 
at Venice, — " Pax tibi, Marce ! Evangelista meus/' 
Page 100. December Fourteenth. 

Calcutta, Dec. 20, 1871. 
" All sorts and conditions of men " in this great Empire — 
Jews, Hindoos, Mahommedans, Parsees, etc., as well as the 
different denominations of Christians — have, during the past 
fortnight, offered up prayers for the recovery of the Prince 
of Wales. On the 14th day of this month (a great Mahom- 
medan festival — the " Eeed-al-Ramzan ") a thousand Suni Ma- 
hommedans of all castes assembled for prayer in the great 
Mosque endowed by the sect at Bombay, and a leading member 
of the Suni Khoja Mahommedans prayed the Almighty for the 
recovery of the Prince. The day is said to have been selected 
as a peculiarly holy one, and the prayers to have been most 
fervent. A Mahommedan prayer-meeting will sound oddly to 
some good people in England, but it cannot fail to be pleasing to 
the Queen and the Royal Family to know that from men of all 
creeds in this great part of Her Majesty's dominions there has 
arisen one common and, I am sure, sincere prayer to the Great 
Father of all, entreating Him to spare the Heir to England's 
Throne. — Letter to the London Times. 

Page 100. Those dark-eyed Persians in their Hindu fanes. 
The Parsees, or fire-worshipers. 



NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 249 

Page 111. While the camels, resting round him, half alarmed 
the sullen ox. 

Near Pisa a herd of camels is kept, upon a farm belonging 
to the Grand Duke. The ancestors of these animals were brought 
thither during- the Crusades. Some of them are employed in the 
work of the farm, and others may be met straying about in the 
pine-woods or along the sands of the coast. 

" These sands, with the sea, the camels, the purity and bright- 
ness of the sky, the solitude and silence, give this picture some- 
thing Oriental, novel, and poetical, which pleases the fancy, and 
transports it to the desert." — Valery. 

Page 111. Strains perchance to maiden's hearing sweeter than 
this verse of mine. 

The Belfry of Bruges. 

Page 116. Might the gross Bourbon — he that sleejis in spite. 

Written at Naples, during the reign of the King that bom- 
barded Palermo. 

Page 119. Thou Scottish Tweed, a sacred streamlet now ! 

" As I was dressing on the morning of Monday, the 17th of 
September, Nicolson came into my room, and told me that his 
master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, and 
wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, 
though in the last extreme of feebleness. His eye was clear and 
calm, — every trace of the wild fire of delirium extinguished. 
1 Lockhart,' he said, ' I may have but a minute to speak to you. 
My dear, be a good man ; — be virtuous, — be religious, — be a 
good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you 
come to lie here.' He paused, and I said, ' Shall I send for 
Sophia and Anne ? ' — ; No,' said he ; ' don't disturb them. 
Poor souls ! I know they were up all night. God bless you 
all ! ' With this he sunk into a very tranquil sleep, and, indeed, 
he scarcely afterwards gave any sign of consciousness, except for 
an instant on the arrival of his sons? They, on learning that the 
scene was about to close, obtained a new leave of absence from 
their posts ; and both reached Abbotsf ord on the 19th. About half 



250 NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 

past one P. M., on the 21st of September, Sir Walter breathed 
his last in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful 
day: so warm that every window was wide open, and so per- 
fectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear — 
the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles — was distinctly 
audible, as we knelt around the bed ; and his eldest son kissed 
and closed his eyes." — Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott. 

Page 143. The Old House in Sudbury Twenty Years 
Afterwards. 

This Old House is the one celebrated by Longfellow as the 
Wayside Inn. It was the first large farmhouse and hostelry 
opened on the high road between Boston and the Connecticut 
River, and is still occupied (1872), though not as a tavern. It was 
always, from its erection in 1690, the estate of one family, whose 
last direct descendants were Lyman Howe and Adam his brother. 

The former passed through life with a strange fear of light- 
ning ; but the dreaded stroke never came until many years after 
his death, when the structure was somewhat damaged. 

Page 144. On the rainbow-colored pane. , 

Prismatic-hued from extreme age. 

Page 221. So that a stupor on the spirit stole 
From things unknown. 

" E stupor m' eran le cose non conte." 

Dante : Purgatorio, xv. 12. 

Page 229. To Dionysius and his tyrant throng. 

Dante, in the twelfth Canto of the Inferno, describes the 
tyrants who outraged humanity as plunged in a river of boiling 
blood, while Centaurs gallop about the stream, shooting them 
with arrows. Among these sinners he numbers Attila, Dionysius, 
Obizzo of Este, and Ezzelino, the tyrant of Padua. 

Page 237. Both creatures, covered with one furry stole. 

"Both beasts furred over with a single stole," or, "two beasts 
under one skin," would be nearer to Dante's expression; but the 
worthy Jesuit, the Padre Venturi, cries out upon this, "Motto 
plebeoj e da mercato vecchio I " 













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